SUPERWOMEN 

ALBERT  PAYSON  TERHUNE 


INTERNATIONAL    FICTION    LIBRARY 

CLEVELAND,  O.  NEW  YORK,  N.  Y. 


Copyright,  MCMXVI 
By  Moffat  Yard  &  Company 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 
by 

THE  COMMERCIAL  BOOKBINDING  CO. 
CLEVELAND 


FOREWORD 

Find  the  Woman. 

You  will  discover  her  in  almost  every  generation,  in 
almost  every  country,  in  almost  every  big  city — the 
Super- Woman.  She  is  not  the  typical  adventuress; 
she  is  not  a  genius.  The  reason  for  her  strange  power 
is  occult.  When  psycho-vivisectionists  have  thought 
they  had  segregated  the  cause — the  formula — what 
you  will — in  one  particular  Super- Woman  or  group  of 
Super- Women,  straightway  some  new  member  of  the 
clan  has  arisen  who  wields  equal  power  with  her  notable 
sisters,  but  who  has  none  of  the  traits  that  made  them 
irresistible.  And  the  seekers  of  formulas  are  again  at 
sea. 

What  makes  the  Super- Woman?  Is  it  beauty? 
Cleopatra  and  Rachel  were  homely.  Is  it  daintiness? 
Marguerite  de  Valois  washed  her  hands  but  twice  a 
week.  Is  it  wit?  Pompadour  and  La  Valliere  were 
avowedly  stupid  in  conversation.  Is  it  youth?  Diane 
de  Poictiers  and  Ninon  de  1'Enclos  were  wildly  adored 
at  sixty.  Is  it  the  subtle  quality  of  femininity?  George 
Sand,  who  numbered  her  admirers  by  the  score — pool 
Chopin  in  their  foremost  rank — was  not  only  ugly,  but 
disgustingly  mannish.  So  was  Semiramis. 


2133125 


Vlll  FOREWORD 

The  nameless  charm  is  found  almost  as  often  in  the 
masculine,  "advanced"  woman  as  in  the  ultrafeminine 
damsel. 

Here  are  stories  of  Super- Women  who  conquered  a: 
will.  Some  of  them  smashed  thrones;  some  were  con- 
tent with  wholesale  heart-smashing.  Wherein  lay  their 
secret?  Or,  rather,  their  secrets?  For  seldom  did  two 
of  them  follow  the  same  plan  of  campaign. 

ALBERT  PAYSON  TERHUNE 
"Sunnybank," 

Pompton  Lakes, 

New  Jersey 
1916 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  ONE 

LOLA  MOiNTEZ I 

CHAPTER  TWO 

NINON  DE  L'ENCLOS 19 

CHAPTER  THREE 

PEG  WOFFINGTON 41 

CHAPTER  FOUR 

HELEN  OF  TROY 62 

CHAPTER  FIVE 

MADAME  JUMEL  89 

CHAPTER  SIX 

ADRIENNE  LECOUVREUR  115 

CHAPTER  SEVEN 

CLEOPATRA  135 

CHAPTER  EIGHT 

GEORGE  SAND  156 

CHAPTER  NINE 

MADAME  DU  BARRY  175 

CHAPTER  TEN 

LADY  BLESSINGTON  204 

CHAPTER  ELEVEN 

MADAME  RECAMIE3.    230 

CHAPTER  TWELVE 

LADY  HAMILTON    .  .250 


CHAPTER  ONE 

LOLA  MONTEZ 

THE  DANCER  WHO  KICKED  OVER  A  THRONE 

HER  MAJESTY'S  Theatre  in  London,  one  ni-Ki 
in  1  843,  was  jammed  from  pit  to  roof.  Lumley 
the  astute  manager,  had  whispered  that  he  had 
a  "find."  His  whisper  had  been  judiciously  pitched  in 
a  key  that  enabled  it  to  penetrate  St.  James  Street 
clubs,  Park  Lane  boudoirs,  even  City  counting-rooms. 

The  managerial  whisper  had  been  augmented  by  a 
"private  view,"  to  which  many  journalists  and  a  few 
influential  men  about  town  had  been  bidden.  These 
lucky  guests  had  shifted  the  pitch  from  whisper  to 
paean.  By  word  of  mouth  and  by  ardent  quill  the 
song  of  praise  had  spread.  One  of  the  latter  forms  of 
tribute  had  run  much  in  this  rural-newspaper  form: 

"A  brilliant  divertissement  is  promised  by  Mr.  Lum- 
ley for  the  forthcoming  performance  of  "The  Tarantula,* 
at  Her  Majesty's.  Thursday  evening  will  mark  the 
British  debut  of  the  mysterious  and  bewitchingly  beau- 
tiful Castilian  dancer,  Lola  Montez. 

"Through  the  delicate  veins  of  this  lovely  daughter 
of  dreamy  Andalusia  sparkles  the  sang  azur  which  is 


2  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

the  birthright  of  the  hidalgo  families  alone.  In  her 
is  embodied  not  alone  the  haughty  lineage  of  cen- 
turies of  noble  ancestry,  but  all  the  fire  and  mystic 
charm  that  are  the  precious  heritage  of  the  Southland. 

"At  a  private  view,  yesterday,  at  which  your  cor- 
respondent had  the  honor  to  be  an  invited  guest,  this 
peerless  priestess  of  Terpsichore ** 

And  so  on  for  well-nigh  a  column  of  adjective- 
starred  panegyric,  which  waxed  more  impassioned  as 
the  dictionary's  supply  of  unrepeated  superlatives 
waned.  This  was  before  the  day  of  the  recognized 
press  agent.  Folk  had  a  way  of  believing  what  they 
read.  Hence  the  gratifyingly  packed  theater  to  wit- 
ness the  mysterious  Spaniard's  debut. 

Royalty  itself,  surrounded  by  tired  gentlemen  in 
waiting  who  wanted  to  sit  down  and  could  not,  oc- 
cupied one  stage  box.  In  the  front  of  another,  lolled 
Lord  Ranelagh,  arbiter  of  London  fashion  and  ac- 
cepted authority  on  all  matters  of  taste — whether  in 
dress,  dancers,  or  duels.  Ranelagh,  recently  come 
back  from  a  tour  of  the  East,  divided  with  royalty 
the  reverent  attention  of  the  stalls. 

The  pit  whistled  and  clapped  in  merry  impatience 
for  the  appearance  of  the  danseuse.  The  West  Encf 
section  of  the  house  waited  in  equal,  if  more  subdued 
eagerness,  and  prepared  to  follow  every  possible  ex- 
pression of  Ranelagh's  large-toothed,  side-whiskered 
visage  as  a  signal  for  its  own  approval  or  censure  of 
the  much-advertised  Lola's  performance. 


THE  WOMAN  WHO  KICKED  OVER  A  THROXE  J 

The  first  scene  of  the  opera  passed  almost  un- 
noticed. Then  the  stage  was  cleared  and  a  tense 
hush  gripped  the  house.  A  fanfare  of  cornets;  and 
from  the  wings  a  supple,  dark  girl  bounded. 

A  whirlwind  of  welcome  from  pit  and  gallery  greeted 
her.  She  struck  a  sensuous  pose  in  the  stage's  exact 
center.  The  cornetists  laid  aside  their  instruments. 

Guitars  and  mandolins  set  up  a  throbby  string 
overture.  Lola  drew  a  deep  breath,  flashed  a  vivid 
Spanish  smile  on  the  audience  at  large,  and  took  the 
first  languid  step  of  her  dance. 

Then  it  was  that  the  dutiful  signal  seekers  cast  covert 
looks  once  more  at  Lord  Ranelagh.  That  ordinarily 
stolid  nobleman  was  leaning  far  forward  in  his  stage 
box,  mouth  and  eyes  wide,  staring  with  incredulous 
amaze  at  the  posturing  Andalusian.  Before  her  first 
step  was  complete,  Ranelagh's  astonishment  burst  the 
shackles  of  silence. 

"Gad!"  he  roared,  his  excited  voice  smashing 
through  the  soft  music  and  penetrating  to  every  cranny. 
"Gad!  It's  little  Betty  James!" 

He  broke  into  a  Homeric  guffaw.  A  toady  who 
sat  beside  him  hissed  sharply.  The  hiss  and  the  guf- 
faw were  cues  quite  strong  enough  for  the  rest  of  the 
house.  A  sizzling,  swishing  chorus  of  hisses  went  up 
from  the  stalls,  was  caught  by  the  pit,  and  tossed  aloft 
in  swelling  crescendo  to  the  gallery,  where  it  was  in- 
tensified to  treble  volume. 

Lola's    artistically    made-up    face    had    gone    whit^ 


4  STORIES     OF     THE     ffUPSfc-WOMEK 

under  its  rouge  and  pearl  powder  at  Ranelagh's  shout. 
Now  it  flamed  crimson.  The  girl  danced  on;  she  was 
gallant,  a  thoroughbred  to  the  core — even  though  she 
chanced  to  be  thoroughbred  Irish  instead  of  thorough- 
bred Spanish — and  she  would  not  be  hissed  from  the 
stage. 

But  now  "boos"  mingled  with  the  hisses.  And 
Ranelagh's  immoderate  laughter  was  caught  up  by 
scores  of  people  who  did  not  in  the  least  know  at  what 
they  were  laughing. 

The  storm  was  too  heavy  too  weather.  Lumley 
growled  an  order.  Down  swooped  the  curtain,  leav- 
ing the  crowd  booing  on  one  side  of  it,  and  Lola 
raging  on  the  other. 

Which  ended  the  one  and  only  English  theatrical 
experience  of  Lola  Montez,  the  dreamy  Andalusian 
dancer  from  County  Limerick,  Ireland.  That  night 
at  Almack's,  Lord  Ranelagh  told  a  somewhat  lengthy 
story — a  story  whose  details  he  had  picked  up  in  the 
East — which  was  repeated  with  interesting  variations 
next  day  on  Rotten  Row,  in  a  dozen  clubs,  in  a 
hundred  drawing  rooms.  There  is  the  gist  of  the 
tale: 

Some  quarter  century  before  the  night  of  Lola's 
London  premiere — and  derniere — an  Irish  girl,  Eliza 
Oliver  by  name,  had  caught  the  errant  fancy  of  a  great 
man.  The  man  chanced  to  be  Lord  Byron,  at  that 
time  loafing  about  the  Continent  and  trying,  outwardly 
at  least,  to  live  up  to  the  mental  image  of  himself  that 


LOLA    MONTEZ  5 

was  just  then  enshrined  in  the  hearts  of  several  thou- 
sand demure  English  schoolmaids. 

Byron  soon  tired  of  Miss  Oliver — it  is  doubtful 
whether  he  ever  saw  her  daughter — and  the  Irish 
beauty  soon  afterward  married  a  fellow  countryman 
of  her  own — Sir  Edward  Gilbert,  an  army  captain. 

The  couple's  acquaintances  being  overmuch  given 
to  prattling  about  things  best  forgotten,  Gilbert  ex- 
changed to  a  regiment  in  India,  taking  along  his  wife 
and  her  little  girl.  The  child  had  meantime  been 
christened  Maria  Dolores  Eliza  Rosanna;  which,  for 
practical  purposes,  was  blue-penciled  down  to  "Betty." 

Seven  years  afterward,  Gilbert  died.  His  widow 
promptly  married  Captain  Craigie,  a  solid,  worthy, 
Scotch  comrade-at-arms  of  her  late  husband's.  Craigie 
generously  assumed  all  post-Byronic  responsibilities, 
along  with  the  marriage  vows.  And,  at  his  expense, 
Betty  was  sent  to  Scotland — later  to  Paris — to  be 
educated. 

At  sixteen  the  girl  was  a  beauty — and  a  witch  as 
well.  She  and  her  mother  spent  a  season  at  Bath, 
a  resort  that  still  retained  in  those  days  some  shreds 
of  its  former  glory.  And  there — among  a  score  of 
younger  and  poorer  admirers — two  men  sued  for 
Betty's  hand. 

One  was  Captain  James,  a  likable,  susceptible,  not 
over-clever  army  officer,  home  on  furlough  from  India. 
The  other  was  a  judge,  very  old,  very  gouty,  very  rich. 

And  Betty's  mother  chose  the  judge,  out  of  all  the 


6  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

train  of  suitors,  as  her  son-in-law-elect.  Years  had 
taught  worldly  wisdom  to  the  once-gay  Eliza. 

Betty  listened  in  horror  to  the  old  man's  mumbled 
vows.  Then,  at  top  speed,  she  fled  to  Captain  James. 
She  told  James  that  her  mother  was  seeking  to 
sacrifice  her  on  the  altar  of  wealth.  James,  like 
a  true  early- Victorian  hero,  rose  manfully  to  the 
occasion. 

He  and  Betty  eloped,  were  married  by  a  registrar, 
and  took  the  next  out-bound  ship  for  India. 

It  was  a  day  of  long  and  slow  voyages.  Betty 
beguiled  the  time  on  shipboard  by  a  course  of  be- 
havior such  as  would  have  prevented  the  most  char- 
itable fellow  passenger  from  mistaking  her  for  a  re- 
turning missionary. 

There  were  many  Anglo-Indians — officers  and  civ- 
ilians— aboard.  And  Betty's  flirtations,  with  all  and 
sundry,  speedily  became  the  scandal  of  the  ship.  By 
the  time  the  vessel  docked  in  India,  there  were  dozens 
of  women  ready  to  spread  abroad  the  bride's  fame 
in  her  new  home  land. 

English  society  in  India  was,  and  is,  in  many  respects 
like  that  of  a  provincial  town.  In  the  official  and 
army  set,  one  member's  business  is  everybody's  busi- 
ness. 

Nor  did  Betty  take  any  pains  to  erase  the  impres- 
sions made  by  her  volunteer  advance  agents.  Like  a 
blazing  star,  she  burst  upon  the  horizon  of  India  army 
life.  Gloriously  beautiful,  willful,  capricious,  brilliant, 


LOLA    MONTEZ  7 

she  speedily  had  a  horde  of  men  at  her  feet — and  a 
still  larger  number  of  women  at  her  throat. 

Her  flirtations  were  the  talk  of  mess-room  and  bung- 
alow. Heartlessly,  she  danced  on  hearts.  There  was 
some  subtle  quality  about  her  that  drove  men  mad  with 
infatuation. 

And  her  husband?  He  looked  on  in  horrified 
•wonder.  Then  he  argued  and  even  threatened. 
At  last  he  shut  up  and  took  to  drink.  Betty 
wrote  contemptuously  to  a  friend,  concerning  this  last 
phase: 

"He  spends  his  time  in  drinking,  and  then  in  sleep- 
ing like  a  gorged  boa-constrictor." 

James  was  liked  by  the  English  out  there,  and  his 
friends  fiercely  resented  the  domestic  treatment  that 
was  turning  a  popular  and  promising  officer  into  a 
sodden  beast. 

One  morning  James  rode  away  over  the  hills  and 
neglected  to  come  back.  His  wife  never  again  heard 
of  him.  And  at  his  exit  from  the  scene,  the  storm 
broke;  a  storm  of  resentment  that  swept  Betty  James 
out  beyond  even  the  uttermost  fringe  of  Anglo-Indian 
society. 

She  hunted  up  her  generous  old  step-father,  Craigie, 
and  induced  him  to  give  her  a  check  for  a  thousand 
pounds,  to  get  rid  of  her  forever.  She  realized  another 
thousand  on  her  votive  offerings  of  jewelry;  and,  with 
this  capital,  she  took  the  dust  of  India  from  her  pretty 
slippers. 


8  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

Here  ends  Lord  Ranelagh's  scurrilous  narrative,  told 
at  Almack's. 

On  her  -way  back  to  England,  Betty  broke  her 
journey  at  Spain,  remaining  there  long  enough  to  ac- 
quire three  valuable  assets — a  Spanish  accent,  a  semi- 
tolerable  knowledge  of  Spanish  dancing,  and  the  ultra- 
Spanish  name  of  Lola  Montez,  by  which — through 
mere  courtesy  to  her  wishes — let  us  hereafter  call  her. 
Then  she  burst  upon  the  British  public — only  to  retire 
amid  a  salvo  of  hisses  and  catcalls. 

With  the  permature  fall  of  the  curtain  at  Her  Ma- 
jesty's Theater,  begins  the  Odyssey  of  Lola  Montez. 

She  went  from  London  to  Germany,  where  she 
danced  for  a  time,  to  but  scant  applause,  at  second- 
rate  theaters,  and  at  last  could  get  no  more  engage- 
ments. 

Thence  she  drifted  to  Brussels,  where,  according  to 
her  own  later  statement,  she  was  "reduced  to  singing 
in  the  streets  to  keep  from  starving."  Contemporary 
malice  gives  a  less  creditable  version  of  her  means  of 
livelihood  in  the  Belgian  capital.  It  was  a  period  of 
her  life — the  black  hour  before  the  garish  dawn — of 
which  she  never  afterward  would  talk. 

But  before  long  she  was  on  the  stage  again;  this 
time  at  Warsaw,  during  a  revolution.  She  danced 
badly  and  was  hissed.  But  the  experience  gave  her 
an  idea. 

She  went  straightway  to  Paris,  where,  by  posing 
as  an  exiled  Polish  patriot,  she  secured  an  engagement 


LOLA    MONTEZ 

at  the  Porte  St.  Martin  Theater.     It  was  her  last  hope. 

The  "Polish  patriot"  story  brought  a  goodly  crowd 
to  Lola's  first  performance  in  Paris.  But,  after  a  single 
dance,  she  heard  the  horribly  familiar  sound  of 
hisses. 

And  at  the  first  hiss,  her  Irish  spirit  blazed  into  a 
crazy  rage;  a  rage  that  was  the  turning  point  of  her 
career. 

Glaring  first  at  the  spectators  like  an  angry  cat, 
Lola  next  glared  around  the  stage  for  a  weapon  where- 
with to  wreak  her  fury  upon  them.  But  the  stage  was 
bare. 

Frantic,  she  kicked  off  her  slippers,  and  then  tore 
loose  her  heavy-buckled  garters.  With  these  intimate 
missiles  she  proceeded  to  pelt  the  grinning  occupants 
of  the  front  row,  accompanying  the  volley  with  a  high- 
pitched,  venomous  Billingsgate  tirade  in  three 
languages. 

That  was  enough.  On  the  instant  the  hisses  were 
drowned  in  a  salvo  of  applause  that  shook  the  rafters. 
Lola  Montez  had  "arrived."  Paris  grabbed  her  to  its 
big,  childish,  fickle  heart. 

She  was  a  spitfire  and  she  couldn't  dance.  But  she 
had  given  the  Parisians  a  genuine  thrill.  She  was  a 
success.  Two  slippers  and  two  garters,  hurled  with 
feminine  rage  and  feminine  inaccuracy  into  the  faces 
of  a  line  of  bored  theatergoers,  had  achieved  more  for 
the  fair  artillerist  than  the  most  exquisite  dancing  could 
have  hoped  to. 


10  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

Lola  was  the  talk  of  the  hour.  An  army  of  babbling 
Ranelaghs  could  not  now  have  dimmed  her  fame. 

Dujarrier,  all-powerful  editor  of  "La  Presse,"  laid 
his  somewhat  shopworn  heart  at  her  feet.  Dumas, 
Balzac,  and  many  another  celebrity  sued  for  her  favor. 
Her  reign  over  the  hearts  of  men  had  recommenced. 

But  Lola  Montez  never  rode  long  on  prosperity's 
wave-crest.  A  French  adorer,  jealous  of  Dujarrier's 
prestige  with  the  lovely  dancer,  challenged  the  great 
editor  to  a  duel.  Dujarrier,  for  love  of  Lola,  accepted 
the  challenge — and  was  borne  off  the  field  of  honor 
•with  a  bullet  through  his  brain. 

Lola  sought  to  improve  the  occasion  by  swathing 
herself  somberly  and  right  becomingly  in  crape,  and 
by  vowing  a  vendetta  against  the  slayer.  But  before 
she  could  profit  by  the  excellent  advertisement,  Dumas 
chanced  to  say  something  to  a  friend — who  repeated 
it  to  another  friend,  who  repeated  it  to  all  Paris — that 
set  the  superstitious,  mid-century  Frenchmen  to  looking 
askance  at  Lola  and  to  avoiding  her  gaze.  Said  Monte 
Cristo's  creator: 

"She  has  the  evil  eye.  She  will  bring  a  curse  upon 
any  man  who  loves  her." 

And  by  that  (perhaps)  senseless  speech,  Dumas 
drove  Lola  Montez  from  Paris.  But  she  took  with  her 
nil  her  newborn  prestige  as  a  danseuse.  She  took  it 
first  to  Berlin.  There  she  was  bidden  to  dance  at  a 
court  reception  tendered  by  King  Frederick  William, 
of  Prussia. 


LOLA    MONTEZ  1 1 

The  rooms  of  the  palace,  on  the  night  of  the  recep- 
tion, were  stiflingly  hot.  Lola  asked  for  a  glass  of 
water.  A  much-belaced  and  bechained  chamberlain — 
to  whom  the  request  was  repeated  by  a  footman — sent 
word  to  Lola  that  she  was  there  to  dance  for  the  king 
and  not  to  order  her  fellow-servants  around. 

The  net  result  of  this  answer  was  another  Irish  rage. 
Lola,  regardless  of  her  pompous  surroundings,  rushed 
up  to  the  offending  chamberlain  and  loudly  made 
known  her  exact  opinion  of  him.  She  added  that  she 
was  tired  of  dealing  with  understrappers,  and  that, 
unless  the  king  himself  would  bring  her  a  glass  of 
\vater,  there  would  be  no  dreamy  Spanish  dance  at  the 
palace  that  night. 

The  scandalized  officials  moved  forward  in  a  body 
to  hustle  the  lesemajeste  perpetrator  out  of  the  sacred 
precincts.  But  the  rumpus  had  reached  the  ears  of 
King  Frederick  William  himself,  at  the  far  end  of  the 
big  room.  His  majesty  came  forward  in  person  to 
learn  the  cause  of  the  disturbance.  He  saw  a  marvel- 
ously  beautiful  woman  in  a  marvelously  abusive  rage. 

To  the  monarch's  amused  queries,  the  chamberlain 
bleated  out  the  awful,  sacrilegious,  schrecklich  tale  of 
Lola's  demand.  The  king  did  not  order  her  loaded 
•with  chains  and  haled  to  the  donjon  keep.  Instead, 
he  gave  a  laughing  order — this  gracious  and  gentle 
sovereign  who  had  so  keen  an  eye  for  beauty. 

A  moment  later  a  lackey  brought  the  king  a  glass 
of  water.  First  gallantly  touching  the  goblet  to  his 


12  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

own  lips,  his  majesty  handed  it  with  a  deep  obeisance 
to  Lola. 

Except  for  the  advertisement  it  gave  her,  she  could 
gain  no  real  advantage  from  this  odd  introduction  to 
a  king.  For,  next  day,  she  received  a  secret,  but 
overwhelmingly  official  hint  that  an  instant  departure 
not  only  from  Berlin,  but  from  Prussia,  too,  would  be 
one  of  the  wisest  moves  in  her  whole  career.  She  went. 

To  Bavaria,  and  to  greatness. 

Lola  Montez,  the  Spanish  dancer,  was  billed  at  a 
Munich  theater.  She  danced  there  but  three  times. 
For,  on  the  third  evening,  the  royal  box  was  occupied 
by  a  drowsy-eyed  sexagenarian  whose  uniform  coat 
was  ablaze  with  decorations. 

The  old  gentleman  was  Ludwig  I.  Dei  gratia,  King 
of  Bavaria,  a  ruler  who  up  to  this  time  had  been 
beloved  of  his  subjects;  and  whose  worst  vice,  in  his 
people's  eyes,  was  that  he  encouraged  art  rather  than 
arms. 

Ludwig  watched  breathlessly  while  Lola  danced. 
Afterward  he  sent  for  her  to  come  to  the  royal  box 
and  be  presented  to  him.  She  never  danced  again  in 
Bavaria. 

For  next  day  Ludwig  introduced  her  at  court  as 
*'my  very  good  friend."  Lola  dazzled  Munich  with 
her  jewels  and  her  equipages.  The  king  presented  her 
with  a  huge  and  hideous  mansion.  He  stretched  the 
laws  by  having  her  declared  a  Bavarian  subject.  And, 
having  done  that,  he  bestowed  upon  her  the  titles  of 


LOLA     MONTEZ  13 

"Baroness  von  Rosenthal  and  Countess  von  Landfeld." 
Next,  he  granted  her  an  annuity  of  twenty  thousand 
florins.  Things  were  coming  Lola's  way,  and  corning 
fast. 

The  Bavarians  did  not  dislike  her — at  first.  When 
Ludwig  forced  his  queen  to  receive  her  and  to  pin 
upon  the  dancer-emeritus'  breast  the  Order  of  St. 
Theresa,  there  was,  to  be  sure,  a  shocked  murmur. 
But  it  soon  died  down.  Had  Lola  been  content 
with  her  luck,  she  might  have  continued  indefinitely 
in  her  new  and  delightfully  comfortable  mode  of 
life. 

But,  according  to  Lola's  theory,  a  mortal  who  is 
content  with  success  would  be  content  with  failure. 
And  she  strove  to  play  a  greater  role  than  the  fat  one 
assigned  to  her  by  the  love-sick  old  king. 

She  had  read  of  Pompadour  and  other  royal  fav- 
orites whose  vagrom  whims  swayed  the  destinies  of 
Europe.  She  sought  to  be  a  world  power;  the  power 
behind  the  throne;  the  woman  who  could  mold  the 
politics  of  a  dynasty.  And  she  laid  her  plans  accord- 
ingly. 

It  was  not  even  a  dream,  this  new  ambition  of  Lola's. 
It  was  a  comic-opera  fantasy.  Bavaria,  at  bes<:, 
was  only  a  little  German  state  with  no  special 
voice  in  the  congress  of  nations.  And  Lola  her- 
self had  no  more  aptitude  for  politics  than  she  had 
for  dancing.  Nor  did  she  stop  to  consider  that  Ger- 
mans in  1846  were  much  more  likely  to  tolerate  a 


14  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

fair  foreigner's  meddling  with  their  puppet  king's  do- 
mestic affairs  than  with  matters  of  public  welfare. 

But  Lola  Montez  ever  did  the  bulk  of  her  sane 
thinking  when  it  was  too  late.  So  she  proceeded  to 
put  her  idiotic  plans  into  operation. 

First,  she  cajoled  King  Ludwig  into  dismissing  in  a 
body  his  perfectly  capable  and  well-liked  ministry.  As 
delighted  with  that  success  as  is  the  village  cut-up  when 
he  pulls  a  chair  from  under  the  portly  constable — and 
with  even  less  wholesome  fear  of  the  result  to  herself 
— Lola  next  persuaded  the  king  to  change  his  whole 
policy  of  state.  Then  things  began  to  happen. 

One  morning  Lola  awoke  in  her  ugly  and  costly 
mansion  to  find  the  street  in  front  of  the  door  blocked 
by  a  highly  unfriendly  mob,  whose  immediate  ambi- 
tion seemed  to  be  the  destruction  of  the  house  and 
herself.  This  was  the  signal  for  one  more  Irish  rage, 
the  last  on  public  record. 

Lola,  throwing  a  wrapper  over  her  nightgown, 
snatched  up  a  loaded  pistol,  and,  pushing  aside  her 
screaming  servants,  ran  out  on  the  front  steps. 

At  sight  of  her  the  crowd  roared  in  fury  and  made 
a.  dash  for  the  steps.  Lola  retaliated  by  emptying  her 
revolver  into  the  advancing  mob.  Events  had  moved 
rapidly  since  the  primitive  days  when  she  was  content 
to  bombard  her  detractors  with  slippers  and  garter 
buckles. 

The  rioters  halted,  before  the  fusillade.  Before  they 
could  combine  for  another  rush,  and  while  Lola  from 


LOLA     MONTEZ  15 

the  topmost  step  was  reviling  them  in  her  best  and 
fiercest  German,  a  company  of  the  royal  bodyguard, 
headed  by  the  old  king  himself,  charged  through  the 
crowd  and  rescued  the  angry  woman. 

But,  though  Ludwig  had  just  saved  her  from  a  sud- 
den and  extremely  unpleasant  form  of  death,  he  was 
not  strong  enough  to  stem  the  avalanche  of  public 
opinion  that  crashed  down  upon  her.  This  same  av- 
alanche proceeded  to  brush  Lola  out  of  her  big  and 
hideous  house,  to  knock  away  from  her  her  titles  of 
baroness  and  countess  and  her  twenty-thousand-florin 
annuity,  and  to  whirl  her  across  the  Bavarian  frontier 
with  stern  instructions  never  to  return. 

Incidentally,  poor  old  King  Ludwig  came  in  for  so 
much  unpopularity  on  her  account  that  he  was  forced 
to  abdicate.  Thus,  in  her  own  fall  from  power,  Lola 
had  also  dragged  a  once-popular  king  off  his  throue; 
a  noteworthy  achievement,  in  that  pre-Gaby-Deslys 
period,  for  an  Irish  girl  with  a  variegated  past. 

The  Ludwig  scandal  preceded  Lola  wherever  she 
tried  to  go.  The  divinity  that  hedges  a  king  was 
everywhere  on  guard  against  her.  The  gate  to  prac- 
tically every  country  in  Europe  was  slammed  in  her 
face.  Folk  fell  to  repeating  Dumas'  "evil-eye"  words, 
and  to  applying  them  to  discrowned  old  Ludwig.  Lola 
Montez  was  not  wanted  anywhere;  certainly  nowhere 
east  of  the  Atlantic. 

So  she  came  to  New  York.  Here  there  were  no 
kings,  to  bar  her  out  lest  they  share  Ludwig's  fate. 


16  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER- WOMEN 

And  Americans  knew  little  and  cared  less  about  the 
evil  eye.  If  Lola  Montez  could  make  good  on  the 
stage,  America  was  willing  to  welcome  her:  If  not, 
it  had  no  further  general  interest  in  her. 

Moreover,  she  was  well  past  thirty;  at  an  age  when 
the  first  glory  of  a  woman's  siren  charms  may  reason- 
ably be  supposed  to  be  slightly  blurred.  New  Yorkers 
were  curious  to  see  her,  on  account  of  her  history;  but 
that  was  their  only  interest  in  her. 

She  danced  at  the  old  Broadway  Theater.  People 
thronged  the  theater  for  the  first  few  performances. 
Then,  having  gazed  their  fill  on  the  Bavarian  throne's 
wrecker  and  finding  she  could  not  dance,  they  stayed 
away;  and  Lola  ended  her  engagement  at  the  Broad- 
way to  the  hackneyed  "beggarly  array  of  empty 
benches." 

An  enterprising  manager — P.  T.  Barnum,  if  I  re- 
member aright — raked  up  the  Byron  story  and  starred 
Lola  in  a  dramatization  of  Lord  Byron's  poem  "Ma- 
zeppa."  But  people  here  had  already  looked  at  her, 
and  the  production  was  a  failure.  Next  she  appeared 
in  one  or  two  miserably  written  plays,  based  on  her 
own  European  adventures.  These,  too,  failed.  She 
then  wrote  a  beauty  book  that  had  a  small  sale,  and 
wrote  also  a  drearily  stupid  volume  of  humor,  designed 
as  a  mock  "Guide  to  Courtship." 

On  her  way  to  America,  Lola  had  stopped  in  Eng- 
land long  enough  to  captivate  and  marry  a  British 
army  officer,  Heald  by  name.  But  she  soon  left  him, 


LOLA    MONTEZ  17 

and  arrived  in  this  country  without  visible  matrimonial 
ties. 

New  York  having  tired  of  her,  Lola  went  West. 
She  created  a  brief,  but  lively,  furore  among  the  gold- 
boom  towns  along  the  Pacific  coast;  not  so  much  by 
reason  of  her  story  as  for  the  wondrous  charm  that  was 
still  hers.  She  gave  lectures  in  California,  and  then 
made  an  Australian  tour. 

Coming  back  from  the  Antipodes,  she  settled  for 
a  time  in  San  Francisco.  There,  in  rather  quick  suc- 
cession, she  married  twice.  One  of  her  two  California 
spouses  was  Hull,  the  famous  pioneer  newspaper 
owner,  of  San  Francisco. 

But  she  quickly  wearied  of  the  West,  and  of  her 
successive  husbands.  Back  she  came  to  New  York. 
And — to  the  wonder  of  all,  and  the  incredulity  of 
most — she  there  announced  that,  though  she  had  been 
a  great  sinner,  she  was  now  prepared  to  devote  the 
rest  of  her  life  to  penance. 

Strangely  enough,  her  new  resolve  was  not  a  pose. 
Even  in  her  heyday  she  had  given  lavishly  to  char- 
ity. Now  she  took  up  rescue  work  among  women. 
She  did  much  good  in  a  quiet  way,  spending  what 
money  she  had  on  the  betterment  of  her  sex's  un- 
fortunates, and  toiling  night  and  day  in  their  be- 
half. 

Under  this  unaccustomed  mode  of  life,  Lola's  health 
went  to  pieces.  She  was  sent  to  a  sanitarium  in  As- 
toria, L.  I.  And  there,  in  poverty  and  half  forgotten, 


38  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

she  died.  Kindly  neighbors  scraped  together  enough 
money  to  bury  her. 

Thus  ended  in  wretched  anticlimax  the  meteor 
career  of  Lola  Montez;  Wonder  Woman  and  wanderer; 
over-thrower  of  a  dynasty  and  worse-than-mediocre 
dancer.  Some  one  has  called  her  "the  last  of  the  great 
adventuresses."  And  that  is  perhaps  her  best  epitaph. 

Her  neglected  grave — in  Greenwood  Cemetery,  in 
Brooklyn,  by  the  way — bears  no  epitaph  at  all.  That 
last  resting  place  of  a  very  tired  -woman  is  marked 
merely  by  a  plain  headstone,  whose  dimmed  letter- 
ing reads: 

Mrs.  Eliza  Gilbert.     Died  June  16,  1861.    Age  42. 

One  trembles  to  think  of  the  near-royal  Irish  rage 
that  would  have  possessed  Lola  if,  at  her  baroness- 
countess-Bavarian  zenith,  she  could  have  foreseen  that 
dreary  little  postscript  to  her  lurid  life  missive. 


CHAPTER  TWO 

NINON  DE  L'ENCLOS 

PREMIERE  SIREN  OF  TWO  CENTURIES. 

THIS  story  opens  with  the  account  of  a  deathbed 
scene;  somewhat  different  from  any  other  you 
may  have  read.  It  is  brought  in  to  throw  a  light 
on  what  heredity  and  careful  instruction  can  do  in 
molding  a  young  mind.  But  don't  necessarily  skip  it 
for  that  reason. 

One  day  in  1 630,  the  Sieur  de  L'Enclos  lay  dying 
in  his  great,  dreary  bedroom  in  his  great,  dreary 
Touraine  castle.  There  was  no  especial  tragedy  about 
the  closing  of  his  life.  He  was  elderly,  very  rich,  and 
possessed  of  a  record  for  having  used,  to  the  full,  every 
minute  of  a  long  and  exciting  life. 

Beside  his  bed  stood  a  fifteen-year-old  girl,  his  only 
daughter,  Anne;  affectionately  nicknamed  by  him — 
and  later  by  all  Europe  and  still  later  by  all  history — 
"Ninon."  She  was  something  below  medium  height, 
plump,  with  a  peachblow  complexion,  huge  dark  eyes, 
and  a  crown  of  red-gold  hair.  Ninon  and  her  father 
had  been  chums,  kindred  spirits,  from  the  girl's  baby- 
hood. 


20  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN' 

The  dying  noble  opened  his  eyes.  They  rested  lov- 
ingly on  the  daughter  who  had  bent  down  to  hear 
the  whispered  sounds  his  white  lips  were  striving  to 
frame.  Then,  with  a  mighty  effort,  De  L'Enclos 
breathed  his  solemn  last  words  of  counsel  to  the  girl 
— counsel  intended  to  guide  her  through  the  future 
that  he  knew  must  lie  before  so  rich  and  so  beauti- 
ful a  damsel.  This  was  his  message  to  her: 

"Ninon — little  girl  of  mine — in  dying  I  have  but 
one  single  regret.  I  regret  that  I  did  not — get  more 
fun  out  of  life.  I  warn  you — daughter— do  not  make 
the  terrible  mistake  that  I  have  made.  Live — live  so 
that  at  the  last  you  will  not  have  the  same  cause  for 
sorrow!" 

So  saying,  the  Sieur  de  L'Enclos  bade  an  exemplary 
farewell  to  earth  and  to  its  lost  opportunities  of  fun. 
To  judge  from  his  career  as  well  as  from  his  last 
words,  one  may  venture  the  optimistic  belief  that  he 
had  not  thrown  away  as  many  such  priceless  chances 
as  he  had  led  his  daughter  to  believe. 

Ninon,  then,  at  fifteen,  was  left  alone  in  the  world. 
And  her  actions  in  this  sad  state  conformed  to  those 
of  the  customary  helpless  orphan — about  as  closely 
as  had  her  father's  death  speech  to  the  customary 
"last  words."  With  a  shrewdness  miraculous  in  so 
young  a  girl,  she  juggled  her  Touraine  property  in  a 
series  of  deals  that  resulted  in  its  sale  at  a  little  more 
than  double  its  actual  value.  Rich  beyond  all  fear  of 
want,  she  settled  in  Paris. 


NINON    DE    L'ENCLOS  21 

It  was  not  there  or  then  that  her  love  life  set  in. 
That  had  begun  long  before.  As  a  mere  child  she 
had  flashed  upon  her  little  world  of  Touraine  as  a 
wonder  girl.  The  superwoman  charm  was  hers  from 
the  first.  And  she  retained  it  in  all  its  mysterious 
power  through  the  seventeenth  century  and  into  the 
eighteenth;  men  vying  for  her  love  when  she  was 
ninety. 

A  full  year  before  her  father  died,  she  had  met  the 
youthful  Prince  de  Marsillac,  and  had,  at  a  glance, 
wholly  captivated  his  semi-royal  fancy.  It  was  Ninon's 
first  love  affair — with  a  prince.  She  was  dazzled  by 
it  just  a  little,  she  whom  monarchs  later  could  not 
dazzle.  She  was  only  fourteen.  And  in  Touraine 
a  princely  admirer  was  a  novelty. 

At  Marsillac's  boyish  supplication,  Ninon  consented 
to  elope  with  him.  Off  they  started.  And  back  to 
their  respective  homes  they  were  brought  in  dire  dis- 
grace. There  was  all  sorts  of  a  scandal  in  the  neigh- 
borhood. The  princeling  was  soundly  spanked  and 
packed  off  to  school.  The  Sieur  de  L'Enclos  came  in 
for  grave  popular  disapproval  by  laughingly  refusing 
to  mete  out  the  same  stern  penalties  to  Ninon. 

To  Paris,  then,  at  sixteen,  went  the  orphaned  Ninon. 
Laughing  at  convention  and  at  the  threats  of  her 
shocked  relatives,  she  set  up  housekeeping  on  her  own 
account,  managing  the  affairs  of  her  Rive  Gauche 
mansion  with  the  ease  of  a  fifty-year-old  grande  dame. 

On  Paris  burst  the  new  star.      In  a  month  the  city 


22  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

was  crazy  over  her.  Not  her  beauty  alone,  nor  her 
wit,  nor  her  peculiar  elegance,  nor  her  incredibly  high 
spirits. — Not  any  or  all  of  these,  but  an  all-compelling 
magnetism  drew  men  to  her  in  shoals  and  swarms. 

By  reason  of  her  birth  and  breeding  she  took  at 
once  her  place  in  the  court  society  of  the  day.  Before 
she  was  twenty,  she  was  setting  the  fashions  for  fem- 
inine Paris,  and  was  receiving  in  her  salon  the  state- 
liest ladies  of  the  court,  in  equal  numbers  with  their 
far  less  stately  husbands. 

Frankly,  she  declared  herself  a  votary,  not  of  love, 
but  of  loves.  For  constancy  she  had  no  use  what- 
soever. One  admirer  who  had  won  a  temporay  lease 
of  her  gay  heart  swore  he  would  kill  himself  unless 
Ninon  would  swear  to  love  him  to  eternity. 

And  as  she  loved  him  ardently,  she  made  the  rash 
vow.  When  at  the  end  of  ninety  days  she  gave  him 
his  dismissal,  he  reproached  her  wildly  and  bitterly 
for  her  broken  pledge. 

"You  swore  you  would  love  me  to  eternity!"  he 
raged.  "And  now " 

"And  now,"  she  explained,  as  one  might  soothe  a 
cranky  child,  "I  have  kept  my  vow.  I  have  loved 
you  for  three  endless  months.  That  is  an  eternity — 
for  love!" 

And  three  months  remained,  to  the  end,  Ninon's 
record  for  fidelity  to  any  one  man;  which  was,  per- 
haps, as  well,  for  the  waiting  list  was  as  long  as  that 
of  a  hyper-fashionable  club. 


NINON     DE     I/ENCLOS  23 

And  now  we  come  to  a  story  that  I  do  not  ask 
you  to  believe,  although  all  France  unquestionably  and 
unquestioningly  believed  it.  Whether  Ninon  herself 
at  first  coined  it  as  a  joke,  or  whether  it  was  a  hoax 
that  she  herself  credited,  it  is  certain  that  she  grew 
at  last  to  have  firm  faith  in  it. 

One  night — so  Ninon  always  declared — when  she 
was  about  twenty,  she  returned  home  late  from  a 
ball  at  the  Hotel  St.  Evremond.  As  she  stood  before 
the  mirror  of  her  boudoir,  after  her  maid  had  left  her 
for  the  night,  she  became  aware  of  a  shadowy  reflec- 
tion behind  her. 

Turning,  she  saw  a  man  clad  all  in  black,  his  face 
hidden  by  the  low  brim  of  his  hat  and  by  his  cloak's 
folds.  What  little  was  visible  of  his  countenance  was 
ghastly  pale.  Ninon,  ever  fearless,  did  not  cry  out 
for  help.  Instead,  she  approached  the  black-shrouded 
stranger  and  demanded  to  know  his  business  and  how 
he  had  penetrated  to  her  close-barred  room. 

The  man  in  black,  by  way  of  answer,  drew  one 
sable-gloved  hand  from  beneath  his  cloak.  In  his 
fmgers  he  grasped  a  large  phial,  wherein  sparkled  and 
glowed  a  strange,  pinkish  liquid. 

"Life  is  short,"  said  the  visitor,  as  Ninon  still  looked 
in  amazed  inquiry  from  his  half-hidden  face  to  the 
rcse-colored  phial  he  carried.  "Life  is  short,  but 
youth  is  far  shorter.  When  youth  is  gone,  love  is 
gone.  Love  is  the  goal  of  life.  Without  youth,  there 
is  no  love.  Without  love,  life  is  a  desert.  The  gifts 


24  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN' 

of  youth  and  beauty  are  yours.  Would  you  make 
them  long-lasting,  instead  of  transient  blessings  that 
shall  too  soon  become  mere  memories?" 

As  Ninon,  dumb  with  wonder,  hesitated  to  reply, 
he  continued: 

"The  admiration  of  men  melts  like  summer  snow 
at  the  first  touch  of  age  in  a  woman.  Their  admira- 
tion is  now  yours.  Would  you  hold  it?  One  drop 
a  day  from  this  phial,  in  your  bath,  will  keep  you 
young,  will  keep  you  beautiful,  will  retain  for  you  the 
love  of  men." 

He  set  the  flask  on  her  dressing  table  and  turned 
to  go. 

"You  will  see  me  again,"  he  said  very  slowly  and 
distinctly,  "just  three  days  before  your  death." 

And  he  vanished. 

To  a  generation  that  has  substituted  science  for 
superstition,  this  tale  of  the  Man  in  Black  reads  like 
stark  nonsense.  Perhaps  it  is.  But  no  one  in  the 
seventeenth  century  thought  so.  It  was  an  age  rife 
with  demon  legends;  legends  of  favors  granted  to 
mortals  in  return  for  a  residuary  mortgage  on  their 
souls;  and  all  that  sort  of  thing.  The  tale  of  Faust 
was  still  almost  brand-new.  Compared  with  many  of 
the  traditions  that  then  passed  for  solid  fact,  the  in- 
cident of  Ninon  and  the  Man  in  Black  was  almost 
commonplace. 

We  laugh  at  such  things;  probably  with  due  justi- 
fication. Yet  was  Ninon's  adventure  more  inexplic- 


NINON    DE    L'ENCLOS  25 

able  than  some  of  the  absolutely  authenticated  cases 
of  Cagliostro's  magic?  As,  for  a  single  example, 
when  on  a  certain  date  Cagliostro  announced  in  Paris: 
"The  Empress  Maria  Theresa  of  Austria  died  this 
morning."  This  was  long  before  the  time  of  tele- 
graphy or  even  of  railroads.  It  was  a  journey  of  sev- 
eral days  from  Paris  to  Vienna.  Dispatches,  reaching 
the  French  court  a  week  later,  announced  the  unfore- 
seen death  of  Maria  Theresa  at  the  very  hour  named 
by  Cagliostro. 

Ninon  may  have  invented  the  Man  in  Black.  Or 
he  may  have  been  one  of  the  many  quacks  who  hung 
on  the  fringes  of  courts  and  made  capital  out  of  the 
superstitious  folly  of  the  rich.  Or  perhaps 

At  all  events,  seventy  years  later,  Ninon  had  either 
a  most  remarkable  encounter  with  the  same  man,  or 
else,  in  her  dying  moments,  she  took  odd  trouble  to 
substantiate  a  silly  lie  that  was  nearly  three-quarters  of 
a  century  old.  Finish  the  story  and  then  form  your 
own  theories. 

Paris  was  alive  in  those  days  with  titled  women 
whose  antecedents  were  doubtful  and  about  "whose 
characters  there  could  unluckily  be  no  doubt.  They 
moved  in  the  best  society — or,  rather,  in  the  highest. 
Most  of  them  made  a  living  by  one  form  or  another 
of  graft.  And  always  there  was  an  exclusive  class 
of  women  who  would  not  receive  them. 

Ninon  quickly  proved  she  had  neither  lot  nor  parcel 
with  these  titled  adventuresses.  From  first  to  last  she 


26  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

accepted  not  a  sou,  not  a  jewel,  not  a  favor — political 
or  otherwise — from  the  grands  seigneurs  who  de- 
lighted to  do  her  honor.  From  first  to  last,  too,  she 
accepted  as  her  due  the  friendship  of  the  most  re- 
spectable and  respected  members  of  her  own  sex. 

She  was  never  an  adventuress,  never  a  grafter, 
never  a  climber.  She  loved  for  love's  own  sake.  And 
if  the  men  to  whom  in  lightning  succession  she  gave 
her  resilient  heart  chanced  often  to  be  among  the 
foremost  of  the  realm,  it  was  only  because  the  quali- 
ties that  made  them  what  they  were  made  them  also 
the  type  of  man  Ninon  preferred. 

She  never  benefited  in  any  material  way  from  their 
adoration.  The  nearest  approach  was  when  Riche- 
lieu, the  grim  old  iron  cardinal,  bent  his  ecclesiastical 
and  consumptive  body  before  her  altar.  She  used 
her  power  over  Richelieu  freely,  but  never  for  herself; 
always  to  soften  the  punishment  of  some  luckless  man 
or  woman  who  had  fallen  under  the  rod  of  his  emin- 
ence's displeasure. 

Thereby,  and  through  Richelieu's  love  for  her, 
Ninon  clashed  with  no  less  a  personage  than  the  Queen 
of  France  herself. 

When  Anne  of  Austria  came  from  Spain  to  be  the 
bride  of  Louis  XIII  of  France,  Richelieu  fell  in  love 
with  the  pretty  young  queen.  Anne  had  not  wit 
enough  to  appreciate  the  cardinal's  genius  or  to  fear 
his  possible  hate.  So — seeing  in  him  only  a  homely 
and  emaciated  little  man,  whose  pretensions  she  con- 


NINON    DE    I/ENCLOS  27 

sidered  laughable — the  queen  hit  on  a  scheme  of  rid- 
ding herself  forever  of  Richelieu's  love  sighs. 

She  pretended  to  listen  to  his  courtship,  then  told 
him  coyly  that  his  austerity  and  lack  of  human  weak- 
ness and  of  humor  made  her  afraid  of  him.  The  en- 
amored Richelieu  insisted  that  he  could  be  as  human 
and  as  fun  loving  as  any  other  man.  Anne  bade  him 
prove  it  by  dressing  as  a  circus  clown  and  dancing  a 
saraband  for  her.  She  said  she  would  hide  behind 
the  curtains  of  a  room  in  the  palace  and  watch  him 
do  it.  Then,  were  she  convinced  that  he  could  really 
unbend  and  could  she  overcome  her  fear  of  his  lofty 
dignity,  she  would  come  forth  and  tell  him  so. 

The  all-powerful  Richelieu — the  man  of  blood, 
whom  even  the  haughtiest  nobles  feared — so  far  lost 
every  remnant  of  sanity  as  to  do  as  the  queen  bade 
him.  As  a  harlequin,  he  capered  and  leaped  about 
the  empty  room,  his  eyes  ever  on  the  curtain  at  its 
far  end. 

Suddenly,  in  the  midst  of  his  idiotic  performance, 
the  curtain  was  dashed  aside;  a  howl  of  laughter  swept 
the  room;  and  the  queen  stood  revealed  to  his  gaze. 
Clustered  around  her  and  reeling  with  mirth  were  a 
score  of  courtiers;  men  and  women  both. 

From  that  day  Richelieu  was  Anne's  sworn  foe. 
He  wrecked  her  repute  with  the  king,  and  for  a  long 
time  managed  to  have  her  kept  a  prisoner  in  the  pal- 
ace. In  a  thousand  ways  he  made  her  life  a  torment. 

And    now,    through    the    grim    cardinal's    love    for 


28  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

Ninon  de  L'Enclos,  Anne  thought  she  saw  a  way  of 
striking  back  at  her  enemy.  She  sent  for  Ninon, 
chicled  her  for  her  mode  of  living,  and  ended  by 
ordering  her  sharply  to  retire  at  once  to  a  convent. 
Ninon  simply  smiled  at  the  command,  curtsied  to  the 
queen,  and  said  demurely: 

"I  will  gladly  go  to  any  convent  your  majesty  may 
designate — just  as  soon  as  I  become  as  unattractive 
to  men  as  is  the  woman  who  wants  to  send  me  there." 

She  left  the  royal  presence.  And  so  great  was  the 
power  of  the  girl's  beauty  in  the  hearts  of  those  in 
France's  high  places,  Anne  did  not  dare  put  her  com- 
mand into  effect.  The  tale  of  the  conversation  spread 
like  the  prehistorically  bromidic  "wildfire,"  and  Ninon 
won  new  laurels  thereby. 

The  Duke  of  St.  Evremond,  at  that  time  one  of  the 
greatest  men  in  Europe,  offered  her  his  heart  and  his 
princely  fortune.  She  replied  that  his  heart  was  a 
precious  gift  which  she  would  prize  forever — or  for  a 
month  or  two  at  the  very  least;  but  that  she  had  no 
use  whatever  for  his  fortune,  as  she  had  all  the  money 
she  needed  and  more  would  be  only  a  burden. 

And  the  duke — veteran  of  many  a  love  affair  where 
fortunes  had  counted  for  far  more  than  hearts — made 
the  quaint,  historic  reply: 

"Mademoiselle,  tu  es  un  honnete  hornme!"  (Mad- 
emoiselle, you  are  an  honest  man!") 

Three  generations  of  Sevignes — father,  son,  and 
grandson — in  turn  loved  Ninon  during  her  seventy- 


NINON    DE    I/ENCLOS  29 

five  years  of  heartbreaking.  Love  for  her  seemed 
a  hereditary  trait  in  the  Sevigne  family. 

But  it  was  the  old  Duke  of  St.  Evremond,  of  all 
her  numberless  wooers,  for  whom  Ninon  cared  most. 
Though  their  love  was  soon  dead,  they  remained  loyal 
and  devoted  friends  to  the  day  of  the  duke's  death. 
Their  correspondence — prettily  formal,  yet  with  an 
undercurrent  of  true  affection — is  still  extant.  And 
through  life  Ninon  ran  always  to  the  duke  with  every 
sorrow  or  perplexity;  notably  when,  at  the  age  of 
sixty,  she  discovered  her  first  wrinkle,  an  all  but  in- 
visible crease  between  her  brows.  In  horror  she 
related  to  St.  Evremond  the  fearful  tragedy.  With 
a  laugh  he  banished  her  dread. 

"That  is  no  wrinkle,  ma  petite,"  he  reassured  her. 
"Love  placed  it  there  to  nestle  in." 

The  mighty  Prince  de  Conde,  the  left-handedly 
royal  D'Estrees,  La  Rochefoucauld  (the  Machiavelli  of 
France, )  and  many  another  of  like  rank  and  attainment 
were  proud  to  count  themselves  Ninon's  worshipers. 
To  no  one  did  she  show  more  favor  than  to  another. 
King  of  France  or  Scarron,  the  humpback  poet — so 
long  as  they  could  amuse  her,  Ninon  gave  no  thought 
to  their  titles  or  wealth  or  name.  To  her,  one  was  as 
good  as  another.  To  none  did  she  give  fidelity. 
Nearly  all  of  them  she  treated  outrageously.  Yet  of 
them  all,  only  one  was  ever  driven  away  by  her 
caprices  before  she  was  fully  ready  to  dismiss  him. 

That    sole    exception    was    the    gallant    Comte    de 


30  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

Fiesque,  who,  for  a  brief  space  of  time,  held  her  wan- 
dering heart  and  thoughts.  Ninon  as  a  rule  was  not 
quarrelsome.  But  she  and  De  Fiesque  were  as  flint 
and  steel.  Their  affair  was  one  fierce  series  of  spats 
and  disputes  that  blazed  out  at  last  in  a  pyrotechnic 
row. 

As  a  result  of  this  climax  quarrel,  De  Fiesque  scut- 
tled away  in  red  wrath,  vowing  that  he  was  forever 
and  ever  done  with  so  ill-tempered  and  cranky  a 
woman  as  Ninon  de  L'Enclos. 

Ninon  was  aghast.  Paris  was  aghast.  France  was 
aghast.  The  love  world  at  large  was  aghast.  For 
the  first  time  in  her  whole  hectic  life,  Ninon  de  L'En- 
clos had  been  deserted — actually  deserted!  And  by 
a  nobody  like  De  Fiesque!  She  who  had  snubbed  a 
king,  had  tired  of  Condez,  had  yawned  daintily  in  the 
half-monarchical  face  of  D'Estrees  himself! 

It  was  unbelievable.  For  an  instant  her  fame  as 
a  peerless  and  all-conquering  Wonder  Woman  threat- 
ened to  go  into  partial  eclipse.  But  only  for  an  in- 
stant. 

De  Fiesque,  placed  during  a  little  hour  on  a  pinnacle 
of  flaring  originality,  began  to  receive  tenderly  re- 
proachful letters  from  Ninon,  beseeching  him  to  come 
back  to  her,  saying  she  had  been  wrong  in  their  dis- 
pute, begging  his  forgiveness — Ninon,  to  whom 
princes  had  knelt  trembling! — promising  all  sorts  of 
meek,  womanly  behavior  if  only  he  would  cure  her 
heartbreak  by  a  word  of  love 


NINON    DE    L'ENCLOS  31 

These  letters  of  hers  to  her  deserter  would  have 
moved  an  equestrian  statute  to  maudlin  tears.  But 
De  Fiesque's  pride  had  been  too  deeply  cut  by  that 
last  quarrel,  to  let  him  relent.  Besides,  he  \vas  vastly 
enjoying  his  novel  position  as  the  only  man  on  earth 
to  -whom  Ninon  de  L'Enclos  had  made  such  an  ap- 
peal. So  \vhile  his  fellow  courtiers  alternately  envied 
him  and  longed  to  kick  him,  they  wondered  what 
might  be  the  secret  of  his  fascination  over  Ninon. 

Thus,  for  a  few  days,  matters  stood.  Then  Ninon 
hit  on  a  master  stroke.  The  thing  that  had  first  at- 
tracted De  Fiesque  to  her  had  been  the  glory  of  her 
red-gold  hair.  He  had  loved  to  bury  his  face  in  its 
shimmering,  soft  masses,  to  run  its  silk  strands  through 
his  fingers.  Incidentally,  in  the  course  of  their  epoch- 
marking  quarrel,  he  had  called  Ninon  supremely  vain 
and  selfish. 

Now  she  cut  off  all  her  wonderful  hair;  cut  it  off, 
wrapped  it  up,  and  sent  it,  without  a  word  of  ex- 
planation, to  De  Fiesque.  He  understood.  She  had 
made  this  supreme  sacrifice  for  him — for  the  man  who 
had  deserted  her.  To  him  she  was  offering  this  chief 
beauty  of  hers. 

De  Fiesque's  pride  vanished.  Through  the  streets 
he  ran,  bareheaded,  to  Ninon's  house.  Into  her  pres- 
ence he  dashed  and  flung  himself  at  her  feet,  implor- 
ing forgiveness  for  his  brutality  and  vowing  that  he 
loved  her  alone  in  all  the  world. 

But  the  rest  of  the  dialogue  did  not  at  all  work  out 


32  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

along  any  recognized  lines  of  lovers'  reconciliations. 
Ninon  patiently  heard  to  an  end  De  Fiesque's  blub- 
bered protestations  of  devotion.  Then,  very  calmly 
and  triumphantly,  she  pointed  to  the  door. 

The  interview  was  over.  So  was  the  affair.  Ninon 
de  L'Enclos  was  vindicated.  No  lover  had  ever  per- 
manently deserted  her.  There  was  no  man  so  stubborn 
that  she  could  not  lure  him  back  to  her.  The  De 
Fiesque  incident  was  closed.  All  that  remained  for 
Ninon  to  do  was  to  introduce  among  Paris  women  a 
temporary  fashion  of  wearing  the  hair  short.  Which 
she  promptly  did.  And  thus  she  suffered  not  at  all 
by  her  ruse. 

Some  two  centuries  later,  George  Sand,  who  had 
read  of  the  incident,  tried  the  same  trick  to  win  back 
Alfred  de  Musset.  In  her  case,  it  was  a  right  dismal 
failure.  De  Musset,  too,  was  entirely  cognizant  of  the 
story  of  Ninon's  shorn  hair.  And  even  without  her 
hair,  Ninon  was  lovely;  while,  even  with  hers,  George 
Sand  was  hideous. 

Queen  Christina  of  Sweden  came  to  France.  Ninon 
delighted  the  eccentric  Swede.  Christina  made  a  con- 
fidante and  familiar  friend  of  her.  She  begged  Ninon 
to  return  with  her  to  Sweden,  promising  her  a  title 
and  estates  and  a  high  place  at  court. 

Ninon  called  unexpectedly  at  Christina's  Paris 
apartments  one  morning  to  talk  over  the  plan.  She 
entered  the  queen's  drawing-room  unannounced. 
There  on  the  floor  lay  a  man,  one  of  the  Swedish 


NINON   DE   L'ENCLOS  33 

officials  in  Christina's  suite.  He  was  dead — murdered 
— and  was  lying  as  he  had  fallen  when  he  had  been 
stricken  down. 

Above  him  stood  Christina,  at  her  side  the  assas- 
sin who  had  struck  the  blow.  The  queen  turned  to 
Ninon  and  explained.  The  official  had  displeased 
her  majesty  by  some  undiplomatic  act;  and  taking 
justice  into  her  own  hands,  Christina  had  ordered 
another  member  of  her  suite  to  murder  the  offender. 
She  was  as  unconcerned  over  the  killing  as  if  she  had 
ordered  a  rabid  dog  to  be  shot. 

Ninon  fled  in  panic  fear  from  the  apartment.  Nor 
«ver  again  could  she  be  induced  to  come  into  the 
presence  of  the  royal  murderess.  Thus  ended  the 
Swedish  project. 

Though  the  confidential  friendship  of  one  queen 
was  thus  taken  forcibly  from  Ninon,  she  had  later  the 
satisfaction  of  helping  on  the  cause  of  another  and 
uncrowned  queen.  It  is  her  one  recorded  experience 
in  dabbling  with  politics,  and  the  role  she  played 
therein  is  interesting. 

King  Louis  XIV. — son  of  that  Anne  of  Austria  who 
had  hated  Ninon — had  reached  the  age  when  life  be- 
gan at  times  to  drag.  The  "Grand  Monarque"  had 
still  fewer  reasons  than  those  of  Ninon's  father  to  de- 
plore the  missing  of  any  good  times.  But  youth  had 
fled  from  him  at  last.  He  found  himself,  in  middle 
age,  a  sour-faced,  undersized  man,  with  a  huge  peri- 
wig, a  huger  outjutting  beak  of  a  nose,  and  wearing 


.54  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

egregiously  high  boot  heels  to  eke  out  his  height. 
People — a  very  few  of  them  and  at  a  safe  distance — 
were  beginning  to  laugh  at  his  pretensions  as  a  lady- 
killer.  Nature,  too,  was  proving  herself  less  a  tender 
mother  than  a  Gorgonlike  stepmother,  by  racking  him 
with  dyspepsia,  bad  nerves,  and  gout. 

These  causes  led  him  to  turn  temporarily  to  what 
he  termed  "the  higher  life."  In  other  words,  by  his 
whim,  the  court  took  to  wearing  somber  garments, 
changing  its  scandalous  conversation  for  pious  reflec- 
tions and  its  unprintable  novels  for  works  on  philos- 
ophy. Whereat,  yawns  of  boredom  assailed  high 
Heaven. 

In  the  course  of  his  brief  penitence,  Louis  frowned 
majestically  upon  his  tempest-tempered  favorite, 
Madame  de  Montespan.  And  she — tactless  or  over- 
sure  of  her  position — scowled  back,  harshly  derided 
the  new  order  of  affairs,  and  waxed  more  evil-tem- 
pered than  ever. 

In  Madame  de  Montespan's  household  was  a  cer- 
tain Madame  de  Maintenon,  widow  of  the  hump- 
backed little  Scarron,  who  had  once  sued  for  Ninon 
de  L'Enclos*  favor.  Strangely  enough,  his  widow  and 
Ninon  were  close  friends.  And  at  this  court  crisis, 
Ninon  made  the  term  "friendship**  mean  something. 

She  herself  had  plainly  shown  that  she  had  no 
interest  in  the  king.  Now  she  set  to  work  to  make 
the  king  feel  an  interest  in  Madame  de  Maintenon, 
whom  Louis  in  his  long  period  of  gayety  had  always 


NINON     DE     I/ENCLOS  35 

disliked.  Ninon  taught  the  widow  how  and  when  to 
throw  herself  in  the  king's  way,  and  how  to  treat  him. 
She  coached  her  friend  as  a  stage  director  coaches  a 
promising  but  raw  actor. 

As  a  result,  when  Louis  came,  smarting,  from  a 
squabble  with  the  fiery  De  Montespan,  he  would  find 
himself,  by  the  merest  chance,  in  the  presence  of  De 
Maintenon,  whose  grave  gentleness  and  attitude  of 
awed  devotion  served  as  balm  to  his  quarrel-jarred 
nerves. 

He  took  to  seeking  out  the  wise  and  gentle  widow 
——of  his  own  accord,  as  he  thought — and  spending 
more  and  more  time  in  her  company.  And  De  Main- 
tenon,  carefully  coached  by  Ninon,  the  queen  of  heart 
students,  managed  to  awaken  in  the  deadened  royal 
brain  a  flicker  of  admiration  that  slowly  warmed  into 
love. 

At  that  point  Ninon's  genius  achieved  its  most 
brilliant  stroke.  Under  her  instructions  the  widow 
gave  the  king's  advances  just  the  right  sort  of  treat- 
ment. She  made  it  clear  to  Louis  that  she  scorned  to 
be  a  royal  favorite. 

As  a  result,  one  midnight,  there  was  a  secret  wed- 
ding in  the  palace  chapel;  King  Louis  XIV.  becoming 
the  legal,  if  unacknowledged,  husband  of  the  penniless 
humpback's  meek  widow;  Ninon,  it  is  said,  being  on  a 
of  the  ceremony's  few  witnesses. 

Ninon  had  "played  politics"  just  once — and  with 
far-reaching  results  to  history;  as  De  Maintenon *s 


36  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

future  influence  over  her  husband  was  to  prove. 
Among  the  results,  the  revocation  of  the  Edict  of 
Nantes  is  laid  at  De  Maintenon's  door,  an  act  that 
partly  depopulated  France  and  partly  populated 
America. 

By  this  time  Ninon  had  become  something  more 
than  a  -winner  of  hearts  and  a  setter  of  fashions.  She 
found  herself  a  social  arbitter  as  -well.  Without  an 
introduction  to  the  illustrious  Ninon  de  1'Enclos  and 
a  word  of  indorsement  from  her,  no  young  man  could 
hope  to  make  his  way  in  Paris  society.  Noblemen  in 
the  country,  sending  their  sons  to  Paris  for  a  career, 
moved  heaven  and  earth  to  obtain  for  them  letters 
of  introduction  to  Ninon. 

Her  lightest  expression  of  opinion  was  everywhere 
quoted  as  inspired.  With  a  smile  or  a  frown  she 
could  make  or  unmake  men's  futures  at  court.  Had 
she  so  chosen,  she  might  have  become,  with  this 
amazing  amount  of  power,  a  most  unbearable  tyrant. 
Instead,  she  used  her  power  wisely  and  kindly.  Chari- 
table to  a  fault,  her  tact  and  her  money  and  her  bound- 
less influence  were  always  making  the  way  easy  for 
some  one  or  other. 

For  instance,  in  her  old  age — or  rather  in  what 
•would  have  passed  for  old  age  in  any  other  woman- 
she  took  an  interest  in  a  wizened,  monkeylike  boy  of 
the  people.  She  set  him  on  the  path  to  advancement 
and  supplied  him  with  the  money  for  his  education. 
To  his  dying  day,  the  little  man  remembered  her  with 


NINON     DE     I/ENCLOS  37 

a  veneration  most  people  would  have  bestowed  on  a 
saint;  even  though  he  used  the  education  she  had  given 
him  to  help  in  tearing  down  the  monarchy  whose 
nobles  had  been  his  benefactress*  slaves.  He  is  known 
to  fame  as  Voltaire. 

Years  came  and  went.  They  merged  into  decades 
and  quarter  centuries.  The  men  who  once  had  loved 
Ninon  de  L'Enclos  grew  old  and  died,  and  their  places 
were  taken  by  sons  and  then  by  grandsons.  Dynas- 
ties changed.  The  world  rolled  on.  New  times 
brought  new  customs. 

But  Ninon  remained  unchanged.  Still  beautiful, 
still  vibrant  with  all  her  early  gay  charm,  she  re- 
mained to  outward  appearances  what  she  had  been 
for  the  past  fifty  years.  The  grandsons  of  her  girl- 
hood suitors  were  as  madly  in  love  with  her  as  had 
been  their  grandsires.  In  love,  in  society,  in  fashion, 
she  was  still  the  unquestioned  sovereign. 

Throughout  Europe,  there  was  now  no  one  who 
doubted  the  unadorned  truth  of  the  story  concerning 
the  Man  in  Black;  for  it  seemed  that  no  mortal  agency 
could  have  kept  any  woman  so  perennially  young.  As 
the  years  passed,  folk  fell  to  speculating  on  how  many 
drops  of  the  precious  rose-colored  liquid  might  stil! 
remain  in  the  phial.  And,  in  scared  voices,  they 
repeated  the  prophecy  of  the  man  in  black: 

"You  shall  see  me  once  again  three  days  before 
your  death." 

Perhaps,  now  that  you  know  Ninon  better,  you  may 


38  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

laugh  less  contemptuously  at  the  tale  of  the  Man  in 
Black;  or,  at  the  least,  credit  her  with  believing  it. 
Throughout  her  life,  she  never  changed  the  story  in 
any  way;  nor  could  the  shrewdest  cross-examining 
lead  her  to  contradict  herself  about  any  of  its  most 
minute  details.  A  haunting  fear  of  the  Man  in  Black's 
promised  return  was  always  in  her  mind,  even  during 
her  gayest  days  and  nights. 

As  late  as  her  ninetieth  year  men  made  vehement 
love  to  her.  At  an  age  when  most  women  are  with- 
ered crones,  she  still  broke  hearts.  Men  fought  duels 
by  the  dozen  for  her  favor.  In  her  old  age  a  youth 
blew  out  his  brains  on  her  account. 

During  her  later  years  a  great  sorrow  came  to  her, 
Through  no  conscious  fault  of  her  own,  she  was 
enmeshed  in  what  was  probably  the  most  horrible 
tragedy  of  its  sort  in  history.  This  tragedy  cannot 
even  be  touched  on  here.  In  no  book  written  in  the 
English  language  can  you  find  its  complete  details. 
It  is  enough  to  say  that  the  nameless  horror  of  it 
wrecked  Ninon's  health  and  her  mind,  leaving  her  for 
the  time  a  mental  and  physical  wreck. 

Slowly  she  recovered  her  health,  her  brain,  and 
her  unquenchable  spirits.  Her  beauty  had  never  been 
impaired.  And  once  more  she  ruled  as  queen  of 
hearts.  Now,  too,  she  blossomed  forth  into  literature, 
becoming  with  ease  a  famous  author.  Her  essays 
were  quoted,  imitated,  lauded  to  the  skies. 

Nor  is  there  the  slightest  reason  to  doubt  that  she 


NINON    DE    L'ENCLOS  39 

was  their  author.  Always  bluntly  honest  to  a  fault, 
the  woman  who  would  not  accept  rank  or  money  was 
not  likely  to  accept  the  literary  ideas  of  others  and 
pass  them  off  as  her  own.  Also,  the  style  of  her 
published  work  was  identical  with  her  private  letters. 

It  is  odd,  and  possibly — or  possibly  not — significant, 
that  of  the  world's  superwomen,  more  have  leaned 
toward  literature  than  toward  any  other  one  pursuit. 
The  gift  of  writing  comes  nearer  to  being  their  one  com- 
mon trait  than  do  beauty  and  all  the  other  hackneyed 
siren  charms.  The  power  that  enables  such  women 
to  win  hearts  appears  to  manifest  itself  by  use  of  the 
pen. 

To  instance  a  very  few  of  the  hundreds  of  heart- 
breakers  who  were  also  authors,  letter  writers,  and 
so  forth,  of  greater  or  less  note,  one  has  but  to  recall 
George  Sand,  Adah  Menken,  Adrienne  Lecouvreur, 
Ninon  de  L'Enclos,  Lola  Montez,  Madame  de  Sevigne, 
Madame  Recamier,  Madame  Roland,  and  Marie  Stuart. 

By  1  706  there  was  scarce  a  man  or  woman  left 
alive  who  remembered  Ninon  when,  as  a  girl,  she  had 
come  first  to  Paris.  Youths  who  had  worshiped  her 
as  a  middle-aged  woman  were  now  aged  men.  She 
herself  was  ninety. 

To  say  that  she  was  still  a  girl  in  looks  and  actions 
is  a  gross  exaggeration,  of  course;  not  the  firmest  be- 
lievers in  the  Man  in  Black  claimed  that.  But,  at 
ninety,  she  was  still  beautiful,  still  alluring  and  ador- 
able, as  men  continued  to  learn.  Younger  women — 


40  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

women  young  enough  to  be  her  grandchildren — were 
neglected  for  her  sake.  It  is  said  that  on  her  ninetieth 
birthday  she  received  a  fervent  declaration  of  love 
from  a  noble  who  had  met  her  but  a  few  days  earlier. 

Then  came  the  end.  On  one  day,  in  1  706,  Ninon 
de  L'Enclos  was  in  blooming  health;  on  the  next  she 
was  dying.  She  wrote  a  single  line  to  one  of  her 
friends  and  dispatched  it  by  a  messenger. 

The  letter  did  not  find  the  woman  to  whom  it  was 
addressed  until  nearly  a  week  later.  Three  days  from 
the  time  she  wrote  it,  Ninon  died.  The  friend,  open- 
ing the  letter,  read,  scrawled  in  a  fear-shaken  hand, 
this  sentence: 

"I  have  just  seen  the  man  in  black  again!" 


CHAPTER   THREE 

PEG  WOFFINGTON 

IRISH  HEART  CONJURER 

A  THRONG  of  people — barefoot  peasants,  modish 
idlers,  tradesfolk,  riffraff — stood  in  a  Dublin 
courtyard  one  day  in  1  727,  providing  the  much- 
admired  "sea  of  upturned  faces."  All  eyes  were 
raised,  all  necks  were  back  bent.  Every  one  was 
looking  aloft  to  where  a  taut  wire  was  stretched  be- 
tween two  post  tops. 

Along  the  wire  walked  a  harlequin,  taking  mincing 
dance  steps  and  balancing  across  his  shoulders  a  pole 
from  whose  extremities  dangled  two  huge  baskets. 
To  make  the  feat  the  more  interesting  by  adding  a 
spice  of  possible  peril,  announcement  had  been  made 
that  each  basket  contained  a  live  child. 

The  chance  of  a  triple  tragedy  in  the  event  of  a 
misstep  made  the  tight-wire  walk  a  right  diverting 
spectacle,  and  thrilling  withal,  to  the  good  folk  of 
Dublin.  But  half  way  between  the  two  extremity 
posts,  still  a  new  element  of  interest  was  added. 


42  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

For,  at  that  point,  the  top  suddenly  popped  off  one 
of  the  baskets,  and  a  big-eyed,  laughing  face  beamed 
down,  over  the  edge,  at  the  crowd.  The  face  of  a 
seven-year-old  child — a  girl.  A  roar  of  applause  fol- 
lowed upon  the  youngster's  unrehearsed  appearance. 

Thus  did  Peg  Woffington,  a  queen  of  her  century's 
actresses  and  consummate  heart  conjurer,  make  her 
professional  debut. 

Peg — her  full  first  name,  which  nobody  dreamed 
of  using,  was  Margaret — was  the  daughter  of  an  Irish 
bricklayer  who  had  one  point  in  common  with  certain 
modernists  in  that  he  was  rabidly  opposed  to  all 
doctors. 

And  the  medical  guild  had  in  due  time  its  revenge 
on  the  sacrilegious  brick  artist.  For  once,  when 
Woffington  fell  ill,  he  fiercely  refused  to  have  a  physi- 
cian summoned.  And  he  rapidly  grew  better.  As 
her  husband  was  convalescing,  Mrs.  Woffington  sought 
to  make  assurance  doubly  certain  by  calling  in  a 
doctor.  The  pill  juggler  looked  at  the  invalid  and 
pronounced  him  out  of  danger.  Next  day  Woffington 
died. 

Peg  was  just  learning  to  walk  at  the  time  of  her 
lamented  father's  tilt  with  the  cult  of  /Esculapius.  She 
and  her  baby  sister,  Mary,  at  once  set  about  helping 
to  earn  their  own  living,  by  toddling  on  either  side  of 
their  mother  when  the  widow  hawked  watercress 
through  the  streets,  and  shrilly  piping  in  duet  the 
virtues  of  her  wares. 


PEG     WOFFINGTON  43 

To  Dublin,  when  Peg  was  seven,  came  one  Madame 
Violante,  with  a  troupe  of  tumblers  and  rope  dancers. 
Peg  was  apprenticed  to  Madame  Violante.  But  her 
term  of  service  as  a  baby  acrobat  was  short.  Her 
employer  had  better  use  for  her. 

It  was  Madame  Violante  who  originated  the  ever- 
since-popular  custom  of  producing  famous  plays  and 
operas,  with  child  actors  filling  all  the  roles.  Her 
"Liliputian  Troupe"  scored  a  big  success  in  Dublin  and 
the  provinces.  Much  of  this  success  was  due  to  Peg, 
who  almost  invariably  was  cast  for  old-woman  parts, 
and  who  "doubled  in  the  brass"  by  doing  quaint  little 
step  dances  between  the  acts. 

It  was  cruelly  hard  work  for  a  growing  child;  nor 
\vas  the  early  eighteenth-century  theater  the  very  best 
sort  of  nursery  and  moral  training  school  for  little 
girls.  But  apart  from  other  and  less  creditable  lessons 
acquired,  she  learned  stage  presence  and  practically 
every  art  and  trick  of  the  profession. 

From  the  "Liliputian  Troupe,"  Peg  graduated  into 
the  more  lucrative  and  equally  moral  pursuit  of  theater 
orange  vender.  In  slack  seasons,  when  no  cargo  of 
oranges  chanced  to  have  landed  recently  from  the 
Americas,  she  acted,  off  and  on;  playing,  at  twelve, 
mature  roles  in  provincial  theater  comedies,  and  ex- 
hibiting a  rollicking  humor  that  carried  her  audiences 
by  assaut.  At  seventeen,  she  was  playing — at  seven 
dollars  and  fifty  cents  a  week — Ophelia  and  other 
exacting  parts. 


44  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

Incidentally,  on  both  sides  of  the  footlight  candles — 
as  actress  and  as  orange  girl  in  the  pit — she  had  long 
since  made  herself  the  toast  of  the  Dublin  beaux.  She 
was  pretty — though  not  strikingly  so.  She  had  a 
ready,  and  occasionally  flaying,  Irish  wit.  She  had, 
too,  the  magic,  if  still  undeveloped,  fascination  of  the 
super-woman.  As  to  her  morals — they  were  the 
morals  of  any  and  every  other  girl  of  her  environment 
and  upbringing.  She  was  quite  as  good  as  she  knew 
how  to  be.  There  was  not  a  grain  of  real  vice  in  her 
whole  cosmos. 

But  there  was  a  blazing  ambition;  an  ambition  that 
was  cramped  and  choked  in  the  miserable,  makeshift 
provincial  playhouses.  She  burned  to  be  a  famous 
actress.  There  was  no  chance  for  her  in  Ireland.  So 
she  came  to  London. 

It  was  a  case  of  burning  her  bridges  behind  her. 
For  she  carried  a  worn  purse  that  held  seventeen 
shillings.  And  the  not-overnew  dress  she  wore  was 
her  sole  wardrobe.  These  were  her  tangible  assets. 
On  this  capital  and  on  genius  and  pluck  and  ambition 
and  good  looks  and  the  charm  that  was  daily  growing 
more  and  more  irresistible,  Peg  relied  to  keep  her 
going. 

To  manager  after  manager  she  trudged.  Not  one 
would  find  work  for  her.  In  all,  she  made  nineteen 
applications.  And  she  scored  just  precisely  nineteen 
rank  failures. 

Finally,   half  starved  and  wholly  discouraged,   she 


PEG    WOFFINGTON  45 

succeeded  in  interesting  the  manager  of  the  Covent 
Garden  Theater.  And  he  gave  her,  or  sold  her,  the 
chance  she  sought — the  chance  to  appear  before  a 
London  audience. 

Her  first  appearance  on  the  metropolitan  stage  was 
all  that  was  needed  to  prove  her  worth.  At  once  she 
caught  the  public  fancy.  Soon  she  found  herself  the 
most  popular  actress  in  England. 

An  air  of  mingled  sadness  and  gayety  in  her  stage 
work,  an  audacity  and  fresh  youthfulness — and  the 
mystic  charm — carried  her  straight  to  the  front.  At 
this  period  she  touched  nothing  but  comedy — at  which 
she  had  no  peer — and  preferably  played  male  roles. 
Masculine  attire  set  forth  her  stunning  figure,  and  she 
played  devil-may-care,  boyish  parts  as  could  no  other 
woman. 

One  night,  after  the  first  act  of  "The  Constant 
Couple,"  wherein,  clad  in  small-clothes  and  hose,  she 
was  playing  Sir  Harry  Wildair,  Peg  ran  laughing  and 
triumphant  into  the  greenroom.  There  she  chanced 
to  find  her  bitterest  friend  and  rival,  Mistress  Kitty 
Clive,  a  clever  but  somewhat  homely  actress.  Said 
Peg  in  delight: 

"They  applauded  me  to  the  echoes!  Faith,  I  be- 
lieve half  the  men  in  the  house  thought  I  was  really 
a  boy." 

"Perhaps,"  sneered  envious  Kitty.  "But  it  is 
certain  that  at  least  half  of  them  knew  you 
weren't." 


46  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN' 

Peg  stopped  short  in  her  gay  laugh  and  eyed  Kitty's 
plain  visage  quizzically. 

"Mistress  Clive,"  observed  Peg,  in  irrelevant  re- 
flection, "did  you  ever  stop  to  consider  how  much 
utterly  useless  modesty  an  ugly  woman  is  responsible 
for  unloading  upon  this  poor  world  of  ours?" 

Kitty  did  not  again  cross  swords  with  Peg.  Indeed, 
after  the  first  encounter,  few  people  did. 

The  fops,  the  wits,  the  macaronis,  the  bloods,  the 
Corinthians — all  had  discovered  Peg  long  before  this 
time.  She  was  their  darling,  their  idol.  As  this  poor 
article  is  too  brief  in  scope  to  contain  a  transcript  of 
London's  Social  and  Club  Register  of  the  day,  most 
of  Peg's  minor  conquests  must  be  passed  over  without 
a  word.  One  or  two  alone  stand  out  as  worth  a  few 
sentences. 

Macklin,  matinee  favorite  and  really  great  actor, 
fell  heels  over  head  in  love  with  her.  So  did  Hallam, 
the  doctor-author.  Macklin,  having  no  hope  of  win- 
ning Peg's  favor,  was  content  to  watch  over  her  and 
to  guard  her  like  a  faithful  bulldog.  Hallam  was  not 
so  humble. 

Peg  did  not  inherit  her  father's  hatred  for  doctors, 
for  she  flirted  lazily  with  Hallam  and  amused  herself 
with  his  admiration.  In  time  she  tired  of  him  and 
frankly  told  him  so. 

Hallam,  lacking  the  game,  sought  the  name.  Furious 
at  his  dismissal,  he  was  still  eager  to  be  considered  a 
successful  wooer  of  the  famous  actress.  So  he  took 


PEG     WOFFINGTON 


47 


to  boasting  loudly  at  White's  and  the  Cocoa  Tree  that 
Peg  cared  for  him  alone,  and  that  she  had  written  him 
reams  of  burningly  ardent  love  letters. 

Peg  heard  of  the  boast  and  was  foolish  enough  to 
run  to  the  devoted  Macklin  with  the  story,  entreating 
him  to  punish  the  braggart. 

Macklin  did  not  wait  to  write  a  challenge,  or  even 
go  home  for  his  sword,  which  he  did  not  happen  to  be 
wearing  that  day.  Snatching  up  his  cane,  he  rushed 
to  a  near-by  coffeehouse  where  he  knew  Hallam  was 
likely  to  be  found  at  that  hour.  There  he  discovered 
the  author-doctor  drinking  with  a  circle  of  friends,  to 
whom  he  was  descanting  upon  Peg's  worship  of  himself. 

Macklin  sprang  at  Hallam,  seized  him  by  the  throat, 
and  caned  him  unmercifully.  Hallam  writhed  free 
and  whipped  out  his  sword.  Macklin,  forgetting  that 
he  himself  was  wielding  a  cane  and  not  a  sword, 
parried  Hallam's  first  thrust  and  lunged  for  the  doc- 
tor's face. 

The  ferrule  of  the  cane  pierced  Hallam's  left  eyeball 
and  penetrated  to  his  brain,  killing  him  instantly — an 
odd  climax  to  one  of  history's  oddest  duels. 

Macklin  was  placed  on  trial  for  his  life.  But  he 
was  promptly  acquitted.  And  Peg's  renown  glowed 
afresh,  because,  through  her,  a  man  had  died. 

A  pamphlet,  written  by  still  another  vehement  ad- 
mirer, contains  a  description  of  Peg  Woffington, 
written  about  the  time  of  Hallam's  taking  off.  Part 
of  this  word  picture  is  worth  repeating  verbatim.  You 


48  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

•will  note  that,  though  contemporary,  it  is  in  the  past 
tense.     Here  it  is: 


Her  eyes  were  black  as  jet,  and,  while  they  teamed  with 
ineffable  luster,  at  the  same  time  revealed  all  the  sentiments  of 
fair  possessor.  Her  eyebrows  were  full  and  arched,  and  had 
a  peculiar  property  of  inspiring  love  or  striking  terror.  Her 
cheeks  were  vermilioned  with  nature's  best  rouge,  and  outvied 
all  the  labored  works  of  art. 

Her  nose  was  somewhat  of  the  aquiline,  and  gave  her  a 
look  full  of  majesty  and  dignity.  Her  lips  were  of  the  color 
of  coral  and  the  softness  of  down  and  her  mouth  displayed  such 
beauties  as  would  thaw  the  very  bosom  of  an  anchorite.  Her 
teeth  were  white  and  even.  Her  hair  was  of  a  bright  auburn 
color.  Her  whole  form  was  beauteous  to  excess. 


In  the  heyday  of  her  glory,  Peg  went  "to  drink  a 
dish  of  tea"  with  a  party  of  friends  one  afternoon. 
Among  the  guests  was  a  slender  little  commercial 
man,  a  wine  merchant,  in  fact;  shrewd,  stingy,  and 
smug.  How  such  a  character  as  his  could  have 
awakened  the  very  faintest  response  in  impulsive,  big- 
hearted  Peg's  is  one  of  the  innumerable  mysteries  of 
hearts. 

But  at  first  glance  she  loved  the  little  man;  loved 
him  as  never  before  she  had  loved,  and  as  she  would 
never  love  again.  She  had  met  the  love  of  her  life. 

She  asked  to  have  him  introduced.  The  little  vint- 
ner, tickled  that  the  great  Mistress  Woffington  should 


PEG     WOFFINGTON  49 

have  deigned  to  notice  an  unknown  nonentity,  was 
duly  brought  up  and  presented. 

Peg,  her  head  swimming,  did  not  at  once  catch  his 
name  and  bade  him  repeat  it.  Obediently,  the  dapper 
youth  replied: 

"David  Garrick,  madam." 

In  the  hour  that  ensued,  Peg  led  Garrick  to  talk 
about  himself — a  never-difficult  task.  He  told  her 
that  he  hated  his  trade  and  that  he  was  not  making 
money  thereby.  Peg,  appraising  the  man's  appearance 
as  well  as  a  woman  newly  in  love  could  hope  to,  saw 
that,  though  short,  he  was  graceful  and  strikingly 
handsome.  Also,  that  he  had  a  marvelous  voice. 

Abruptly,  she  broke  in  on  his  soliloquy  by  suggest- 
ing that  he  go  on  the  stage.  Garrick  stared.  She 
spoke  of  the  glories  of  a  star's  life.  Garrick  yawned. 
She  mentioned  that  successful  actors  drew  large  sal- 
aries. Garrick  sat  up  and  began  to  listen.  When 
she  went  on  to  speak  of  the  fabulous  receipts  that 
awaited  a  star,  Garrick  feverishly  consented  to  her 
plan. 

Peg  set  to  work,  using  to  the  straining  point  all  her 
boundless  theatrical  influence.  She  got  Garrick  a 
chance.  She  coached  him  in  the  rudiments  of  acting. 
She  found  that  the  little  wine  seller  had  a  Heaven-sent 
gift  for  the  stage.  So  did  the  managers.  So,  in  short 
order,  did  the  public. 

Garrick's  success  was  as  instantaneous  as  had  been 
Peg's  own.  Peg  rejoiced  unspeakably  in  his  triumph 


50  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

So  did  he.  The  lofty  motives  that  actuated  Garrick'a 
stage  work  may  be  guessed  at  from  this  entry  in  his 
dairy,  October  20,  1741: 

Last  night  played  Richard  the  Third  to  the  surprise  of  all. 
I  shall  make  nearly  three  hundred  pounds  a  year  as  an  actor, 
and  that  is  what  I  really  dote  on. 

But  he  made  infinitely  more  than  the  prophesied 
one  thousand,  five  hundred  dollars  a  year.  For  he 
speedily  became  an  actor  manager.  His  business 
training  and  his  notorious  stinginess  were  splendid 
assets.  Money  flowed  in,  beyond  his  wildest  dreams 
of  avarice.  And  he  held  on  to  it  all. 

Peg  was  inordinately  proud  of  his  achievements. 
So  was  Garrick.  Peg  loved  him  to  distraction.  He 
graciously  consented  to  be  loved.  Indeed,  it  is 
probable  that  he  cared  for  Peg  as  much  as  he  could 
care  for  anybody  except  David  Garrick.  A  swarm 
of  women  fell  in  love  with  him  when  he  made  his 
stage  success.  In  spite  of  this,  he  still  loved  Peg.  Even 
if  not  exclusively. 

Then  Peg  and  Garrick  appeared  for  the  time  as  co- 
stars.  And,  with  him,  she  returned  to  the  scene  of 
her  early  struggles  at  Dublin.  At  the  Smock  Alley 
Theater  there,  the  two  acted  in  repertoire. 

The  pair  were  an  enormous  hit.  So  much  so  that 
they  were  forced,  by  popular  clamor,  to  play  straight 
through  the  summer.  It  was  one  of  the  hottest  sum- 


PEG     WOFFINGTON  51 

mers  on  record,  but  great  crowds  jammed  the  theater 
at  each  performance.  An  epidemic  swept  Dublin. 
A  good  many  of  the  playgoers  caught  the  infection  at 
the  playhouse  and  died;  which  caused  the  epidemic  to 
receive  the  sinister  nickname,  "the  Garrick  fever." 

Peg  was  no  less  popular  than  was  her  colleague. 
Together  they  toured  Ireland,  then  came  back  to 
London,  as  openly  avowed  lovers.  They  were  engaged 
to  be  married;  but  the  marriage  was  from  time  to  time 
postponed.  Always  at  Garrick's  suggestion. 

Sir  Charles  Hanbury  Williams,  a  suitor  for  Peg's 
favor  at  this  time,  was  the  author — among  half  a 
bookful  of  odes,  sonnets,  and  so  forth,  to  her  charms 
— of  "Lovely  Peggy,"  a  popular  song  "hit"  of  the  day, 
a  stanza  of  which  runs: 


Once    more    I'll    tune   the    vocal   shell, 
To  hills  and  dales  my  passion  tell, 
A  flame  which  time  can  never  quell, 

That  burns  for  lovely  Peggy. 
Ye  greater  bards  the  lyre  should  hit, 
To  say  what  subject  is  more  fit. 
Than  to  record  the  sparkling  wit 

And  bloom  of  lovely  Peggy, 


But  Sir  Charles  wooed  her  in  vain.  She  had  thoughts 
for  no  one  else  but  Garrick.  One  day,  reproached  by 
the  poet  with  her  greater  regard  for  his  rival,  and  not 
wishing  to  cause  needless  pain  to  the  loser,  Peg  sought 


52  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

to  evade  the  charge  by  saying  that  she  had  not  seen 
Garrick  for  an  age. 

"Nay,"  contradicted  the  luckless  Sir  Charles,  "I 
know  you  saw  him  only  yesterday." 

"Well,"  she  retorted,  "and  is  not  that  an  age?" 

She  and  Garrick  had  a  singular  rule  for  maintaining 
their  antemarital  establishment.  It  was  arranged — by 
Garrick — that  each  should  bear  the  monthly  expenses 
alternately.  When  it  was  Peg's  turn,  it  was  noticeable 
that  much  better  food  was  provided  and  that  many 
more  dinner  guests  were  invited  to  the  house  than 
during  the  alternate  months  when  Garrick  was  run- 
ning the  place. 

Once,  during  a  Garrick  month,  a  crowd  of  people 
dropped  in  unexpectedly  to  tea.  Garrick  eyed  them 
with  scarce-disguised  hostility.  Peg  was  delighted  to  see 
them.  But  no  more  so  than  if  their  call  had  come  on  her 
month  for  paying  the  bills,  for  she  was  lavishly  hos- 
pitable, and  was  always  generous — even  prodigal  to 
a  fault;  traits  that  caused  her  thrifty  lover  much 
pain. 

To-day,  as  usual,  Peg  brewed  the  tea.  Glancing  at 
his  own  new-filled  cup,  as  Macbeth  might  have  glared 
at  the  imaginary  Banquo,  Garrick  groaned  aloud: 

"Peg,  you've  made  this  tea  so  strong  it's  as  red  as 
blood.  Zounds,  ma'am,  d'ye  think  'tis  to  be  bought 
at  a  penny  the  pound  that  you  squander  it  so?" 

It  has  ever  been  the  fashion  of  romantic  chroniclers, 
in  writing  of  this  strange  union,  to  paint  Peg  as  a 


PEG     WOFFINGTON  53 

suffering  saint  and  Garrick  as  a  crank.  The  latter  pic- 
ture is  flawless.  The  former,  unluckily,  is  not. 

For,  though  Peg  loved  the  actor  manager  and — 
temporarily — loved  no  one  else,  yet  it  was  not  in  her 
superwoman  nature  to  rest  meekly  content  with  the 
attentions  of  one  man.  Even  though  that  man  chanced 
to  be  the  celebrated  Davy  Garrick.  Running  through 
the  warp  of  her  love  was  a  woof  of  flirtations. 

For  one  instance,  Lord  Darnley,  a  rich  and  notorious 
Piccadilly  gallant,  proclaimed  himself  her  adorer.  Flat- 
tered at  so  famous  a  nobleman's  love,  Peg  flirted  out- 
rageously with  Darnley.  She  even  denied  to  him  that 
she  cared  for  Garrick. 

Once  Darnley  found  Garrick's  wig  in  Peg's  boudoir 
and  railed  at  her  infidelity  to  himself.  Peg  explained 
that  she  had  borrowed  the  actor's  wig  and  had  brought 
it  home  in  order  to  practice  in  it  a  masculine  role  she 
was  soon  to  play  at  the  Drury  Lane. 

Garrick,  in  jealous  wrath,  protested  against  her  affair 
with  Darnley.  So  she  swore  to  Garrick  that  she  had 
dismissed  his  rival — and  gayly  continued  to  meet 
Darnley  on  the  sly.  In  time,  Garrick  found  her  out 
and  the  discovery  led  to  their  separation.  Afterward, 
in  remorse,  Peg  is  said  to  have  dropped  Darnley.  But 
then,  as  usual,  it  was  too  late  for  her  renunciation  to 
do  any  good  except  to  punish  herself. 

Time  after  time  Garrick  had  set  back  the  date  of 
the  wedding.  When  at  last  the  Darnley  crisis  came, 
Peg  asked  him  frankly  if  he  meant  to  keep  his  pledge 


54  STORIES     OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

or  not.  He  replied  gloomily  that  he  did.  And  he 
went  out  and  bought  a  wedding  ring.  He  sighed  in 
utter  misery  as  he  slipped  the  gold  loop  on  her  finger. 
Out  flashed  Peg's  Irish  temper. 

"If  you  had  ten  times  the  wealth  and  repute  and 
ability  that  the  world  credits  you  with,"  she  declared, 
4 'I  would  not  become  your  wife  after  this  silent  con- 
fession." 

Almost  at  once  she  repented  her  rash  words  of  re- 
lease. But  Garrick  held  her  to  them.  He  considered 
himself  freed.  And  they  parted.  Peg  sent  back  all 
Garrick' s  presents.  He  refused  to  return  hers — they 
included  a  pair  of  diamond  shoe  buckles  she  had  given 
him — on  the  tender  plea  that  they  would  serve  him 
as  reminders  of  her. 

Peg  wrote  an  angry  letter,  pointing  out  very  clearly 
the  wide  gulf  between  sentiment  and  graft,  and  telling 
Garrick  on  exactly  which  side  of  that  gulf  his  action 
in  regard  to  the  presents  placed  him.  Garrick  re- 
taliated by  blackening  her  name  on  every  occasion. 
She  made  no  reply  to  any  of  his  dirty  slurs;  nor  spoke 
of  him  save  in  praise. 

Thus  ended  the  great  love  of  Peg's  life.  But  there 
were  a  host  of  minor  loves  to  help  take  its  place.  Next 
came  Spanger  Berry,  a  fiery  Irish  actor  who,  to  revenge 
Peg's  supposed  wrongs,  did  his  level  best  on  the  stage 
to  crowd  Garrick  out  of  several  of  the  latter's  favorite 
roles.  He  did  not  wholly  succeed  in  this  loverly  at- 
tempt, but  he  caused  Garrick  many  an  hour  of  uneasi- 


PEG     WOFFINGTON  55 

ness,  and  wounded  him  severly  by  causing  a  drop  in 
the  actor  manager's  box-office  receipts. 

Then  came  a  succession.  To  quote  a  biographer 
who  wrote  while  Peg's  name  was  yet  fresh: 

An  infatuated  swain  swore  that  if  she  did  not  return  his 
love,  he  would  hang,  drown,  or  shoot  himself;  and  in  order  not 
to  be  responsible  for  his  suicide,  she  consented  to  listen  to  his 
sighs.  Then  there  came  along  a  gentleman  with  money  who 
won  her  affection.  Another  next  presented  and  outbid  the 
former.  Another  offered,  and  she  received  him  in  her  train. 

A  fifth  appeared,  and  was  well  received.  A  sixth  declared 
his  suit,  and  his  suit  was  not  rejected.  In  a  word,  a  multitude 
of  love's  votaries  paid  their  adorations  to  the  shrine  of  their 
fair  saint,  and  their  fair  saint  was  not  cruel. 

Then,  according  to  the  same  chronicler  and  another, 
came  into  Peg's  life  "a  personage.**  There  is  no  hint 
as  to  his  identity.  Whether  she  was  true  to  him  or 
not  is  debatable.  But  she  soon  discovered  that  he  had 
grown  tired  of  her.  It  was  borne  to  her  ears  that  he 
was  paying  court  to  an  heiress ;  intending  to  break  with 
Peg,  by  degrees,  if  his  suit  were  successful. 

The  heiress  gave  a  masked  ball  in  honor  of  her 
birthday.  Peg  gained  admittance,  in  male  costume, 
to  the  affair,  and  contrived  to  become  her  rival's 
partner  in  a  minuet. 

"When  she  straightway  poured  so  many  and  such  vile 
stories  anent  the  gentleman's  character  into  the  lady's  ears  that 
the  latter  fainted  and  the  ball  broke  up  in  confusion." 


56  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

But  Peg  had  gained  her  aim,  by  hopelessly  discred- 
iting with  the  heiress  the  recreant  lover.  The  match 
was  broken  off.  Peg  felt  herself  right  cozily  revenged. 

The  next  wooer  was  a  "person."  Not  a  "personage." 
He  was  Owen  McSwinney,  a  buffoon.  He  was  the 
premier  clown  of  his  day  and  a  local  celebrity. 

McSwinny  was  fairly  well  to  do.  And,  when  he 
died  soon  afterward,  it  was  found  that  he  had  left 
his  whole  estate — some  two  hundred  pounds  a  year — 
to  Peg. 

It  was  not  long  after  this  that  Richard  Brinsley  Sher- 
idan, in  his  early  prime,  engaged  Peg  at  four  hundred 
pounds  a  season,  to  play  at  his  theater.  Sheridan  was 
fervid  in  his  admiration  of  the  Irish  beauty.  Perhaps 
this  fact,  as  well  as  the  marked  success  she  scored  in 
his  plays,  led  "The  Rivals*  "  author  to  double  her 
salary  after  the  first  season. 

Yearly  she  grew  more  popular  with  her  audiences. 
Having  won  a  matchless  reputation  as  a  comedian,  she 
turned  for  a  time  to  tragic  characters,  and  won  thereby 
a  wholly  new  renown  as  one  of  England's  foremost 
tragedians.  But  comedy  was  her  forte.  And  to  it 
she  returned. 

Peg  always  vowed  she  hated  the  society  of  her  own 
sex;  a  lucky  thing  for  her,  since  she  was  not  received 
by  ladies  of  quality,  as  were  many  of  her  fellow 
actresses,  and  since  her  sharp  tongue  and  the  fact  that 
men  went  wild  over  her  made  her  hated  by  these  fellow 
actresses.  But  her  popularity  with  men  endured,  anc! 


PEG    WOFFINGTOX  57 

she  wasted  few  tears  over  women's  dislikes.  Few 
superwomen  have  been  popular  with  their  own  sex. 

Peg  was  elected  president  of  the  famed  Beefsteak 
Club,  and  she  always  presided  at  the  board  in  man's 
attire. 

All  this  time  she  had  been  supporting  her  mother 
rh  a  luxury  undreamed  of  in  the  days  of  the  medi- 
cophobic  bricklayer.  And  she  had  educated  and 
jealously  safeguarded  her  younger  sister,  Mary. 

Mary  became  engaged  to  Captain  George  Cholmon- 
deley,  son  of  the  Earl  of  Cholmondeley;  a  glittering 
match  for  a  bricklayer's  daughter.  The  earl  was  justly 
indignant  and  posted  away  to  Peg  to  break  off  the 
affair,  if  need  be,  by  bribing  her  and  the  entire  tribe  of 
Woffington. 

Peg  met  the  irate  old  fellow  with  the  full  battery  of 
her  charm.  In  a  trice  she  had  him  bewildered,  then 
half  relenting.  Feebly  he  tried  to  bluster.  Peg  cut 
him  short  with: 

"My  lord,  I'm  the  one  to  complain;  not  you.  For 
now  I'll  have  two  beggars,  instead  of  one,  to  feed." 

It  was  a  true  forecast,  for  the  earl,  despite  Peg's 
blandishments,  withheld  for  a  time  his  check  book. 
And  in  the  interim  she  gave  the  new-wed  pair  a  house 
to  live  in  and  the  money  to  run  it. 

And  now  for  the  last  "big  scene**  of  Peg's  stage 
career:  For  some  time  she  had  been  ailing.  But  she 
kept  on  with  her  acting. 

On  the  evening  of  May   17,    1 75  7,  when  she  was 


58  STORIES     OF     THE     SUPER-WOMEN 

at  the  very  acme  of  her  career,  she  played  Rosalind  at 
Covent  Garden.  Throughout  the  comedy  she  was  at 
her  scintillant  best.  The  house  was  hers.  Wave  after 
wave  of  frantic  applause  greeted  her,  as,  still  in 
Rosalind's  male  habiliments,  she  stepped  before  the 
curtain,  flushed  and  smiling,  to  deliver  the  epilogue. 

Gayly  stretching  out  her  arms  to  pit  and  stalls,  she 
began  the  familiar  lines.  With  a  gesture  of  infinite 
coquetry  she  continued: 

**I  would  kiss  as  many  of  you  as  had  bearda  that  pleased 
me;  complexions  that  liked  me — that  liked  me " 

She  faltered,  whitened  under  her  make-up,  skipped 
three  full  lines,  and  came  to  the  "tag:" 

**— — when  I  make  curtsy — bid  me — bid  me— farewell !" 

The  last  line  haltingly  spoken,  she  threw  her  hands 
high  in  air  and  screamed  in  a  voice  of  abject  terror: 

"Oh,  God!   Oh,  God!" 

It  was  a  prayer,  not  an  oath.  Reeling,  the  actress 
staggered  to  the  wings,  and  there  fell,  swooning,  leav- 
ing the  packed  house  behind  her  in  an  uproar  of 
confusion. 

Kindly  arms  bore  her  from  the  stage  she  was  never 
more  to  tread.  Next  day,  all  London  knew  that 
Mistress  Peg  Woffington  had  been  stricken  with  paraly- 
sis and  that  from  the  neck  down  she  was  dead.  Only 


PEG     WOFFINGTON  59 

the  keen-witted  brain  lived,  to  realize  the  wreck  of  the 
beautiful  body. 

Sorrowing  crowds  blocked  the  street  in  front  of  her 
house  for  days,  momentarily  expecting  news  of  her 
death.  But  Peg  did  not  die.  She  did  not  die  until 
three  tedious  years  had  passed. 

Little  by  little  she  partly  regained  the  use  of  her 
body.  But  she  was  feeble.  Her  rich  beauty  was  wiped 
out  as  an  acid-soaked  sponge  might  efface  a  portrait. 

Out  of  the  gay  life  that  had  been  the  breath  of  her 
nostrils,  feeble  as  an  old  woman,  plain  of  face  and 
halting  of  speech — she  nevertheless  retained  enough 
of  the  wondrous  ancient  charm  to  enslave  another 
adorer. 

The  newest — and  last — wooer  was  Colonel  Caesar, 
of  the  Guards.  On  learning  that  Peg  in  her  stricken 
state  had  infatuated  the  gallant  colonel,  a  coffeehouse 
wit  sized  up  the  situation  by  cruelly  quoting: 

"Aut  Ccesar,  aut  nulliw." 

It  was  a  vile  thing  to  say.  And  Caesar  hunted  up 
the  humorist,  so  runs  the  story,  and  thrashed  him 
within  an  inch  of  his  life. 

Some  time  later,  Tate  Wilkinson,  an  "impersonator" 
of  that  era — yes,  there  were  pests  on  the  earth,  even 
in  those  days — was  scheduled  to  give  a  series  of 
humorous  impersonations  of  famous  actors  and 
actresses  at  the  Drury  Lane;  then  managed  and  partly 
owned  by  David  Garrick. 


60  STORIES     OF     THE     SUPER-WOMEtf 

Peg  feared  she  might  be  held  up  to  ridicule  by  the 
mimicry.  The  fear  preyed  on  her  mind,  to  a  pathetic 
extent.  Colonel  Caesar  went  to  the  theater  and  there 
informed  Garrick  that  if  he  permitted  Wilkinson  to 
impersonate  Mistress  Woffington,  the  colonel  would 
first  give  him  a  public  caning  and  would  then  call 
him  out. 

The  impersonation  of  Peg  had  been  mysteriously 
lost  from  the  imitator's  repertoire  when  the  perform- 
ance was  given. 

Peg  died  in  1  760,  at  the  age  of  forty.  She  left  more 
than  five  thousand  pounds.  She  left  it  to  charity.  And, 
as  a  testimonial  to  her,  a  range  of  low-roofed,  wistaria- 
covered  cottages  was  built  for  the  exclusive  use  of  the 
poor.  The  dwellings  were  known  as  "The  Margaret 
Woffington  Cottages." 

Samson's  costume  would  start  a  panic  on  modern 
Broadway,  yet  it  was  doubtless  deemed  correct  in  his 
time.  Queen  Elizabeth's  table  manners  would  cause 
her  speedy  ejectment  from  any  civilized  restaurant, 
yet  she  was  sixteenth  century's  model  for  etiquette. 
George  Washington's  spelling  would  not  pass  muster 
in  a  primary  school,  though  in  1  776  he  was  regarded 
as  a  man  of  high  education.  While  as  for  Lady 
Go  diva- 
New  times,  new  ways.  Won't  you  remember  that, 
in  dealing  with  Peg  Woffington?  She  was  a  product 
— and  a  fine  product — of  her  generation  and  surround- 
ings. Think  of  her  only  as  an  unfortunate,  warm- 


PEG    WOFFINGTON  61 

hearted,  beautiful  girl,  whom  men  adored  almost  as 
much  for  her  lovable  qualities  as  for  her  siren  fascina- 
tions. 

She  merits  a  pedestal  in  the  temple  of  superwomen. 
If  I  have  failed  to  establish  her  right  to  it,  the  fault 
is  mine,  not  hers. 


CHAPTER  FOUR 

HELEN  OF  TROY 

MODEL  FOR  ALL  THE  SIRENS  OF  THE 
CENTURIES 

SOME  wise  folk  say  she  never  existed.  But,  for  that 
matter,  some  wise  folk  also  say  that  her  press 
agent,  Homer,  never  existed,  and  that  his  "Iliad" 
and  "Odyssey"  were  compilations  of  lesser  men's 
writings.  As  well  say  that  Napoleon  was  a  "compila- 
tion" of  his  marshals. 

Some  aver  that  she  indeed  walked  the  earth,  a 
Wonder  Woman,  and  that  her  charm  perhaps  stirred 
up  strife  among  nations,  but  that  her  fame  kept  on 
growing  after  she  was  dead,  until — even  as  hundreds 
of  jokes  were  attributed  to  Joe  Miller  that  Joe  never 
perpetrated  or  even  heard — people  got  to  making  her 
the  heroine  of  a  myriad  impossible  deeds  and  ad- 
ventures that  no  one  woman  or  no  ten  women  could 
have  achieved. 

Still  others  declare  that  she  and  her  story  were 
allegorical,  standing  for  feminine  charm  and  for  its 
fatal  power;  that  she  embodied  the  Greek  idea  of 


HELEN     OF     TROY  63 

superwoman  perfection.  The  same  sort  of  people 
gravely  tell  us  that  Hercules  and  Croesus  and  William 
Tell  were  "solar  myths" — whatever  that  may  mean — 
and  their  descendants  will  put  the  myth  brand,  ten 
thousand  years  hence,  on  Napoleon,  Roosevelt,  John 
L.  Sullivan,  and  Lydia  Pinkham. 

While  common  sense  may  balk  at  the  tale  of  Helen 
of  Troy,  common  sense  would  as  readily  balk  at  a 
narrative  of  the  high  cost  of  living  or  of  the  All- 
Europe  War.  And  what  is  common  sense  among 
friends?  I  am  going  to  tell  Helen's  story  as  if  it  were 
gospel  truth.  For  all  I  know,  it  may  be.  I  am  not 
going  to  draw  on  a  dull  imagination  for  any  of  it, 
but  to  take  it  entirely  from  a  dozen  of  the  olden 
authorities,  from  Homer  down.  After  all,  since  we 
believe  in  Santa  Claus,  why  not  in  Helen  of  Troy? 

(I  cannot  help  feeling  a  little  thrill  of  pride  in  this 
preamble.  In  spots,  it  is  almost  scholarly.  And  so 
to  the  story.) 

She  was  the  daughter  of  Tyndareus  of  Argos,  one 
of  the  horde  of  kinglets  who  split  up  the  Greek  arch- 
ipelago among  them.  She  lived  three  thousand  years 
ago.  And  so  adorable  was  she  that  some  one  started 
a  rumor  that  she  was  not  the  daughter  of  Tyndareus, 
but  of  great  Jove  himself.  This  kind  of  talk  passed 
as  complimentary  in  those  benighted  days.  Where- 
fore, Helen's  parents  did  not  start  a  suit  for  criminal 
Ubel  against  the  flatterer,  but  heaped  honors  on  him. 

By  the  time  Helen  reached  young  womanhood,  she 


64  STORIES     OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

was  the  wonder  of  all  Greece.  She  was  tall,  slender, 
and  red-haired.  In  a  day  of  almost  universal  dowdi- 
ness,  she  knew  how  to  wear  her  clothes — although  she 
did  not  use  that  knowledge  to  any  prodigal  extent; 
clothes,  in  balmy  prehistoric  Greece,  being  used  for 
adornment  rather  than  as  coverings. 

Her  wit  and  her  subtle  magnetism  vied  with  her 
good  looks.  Suitors  came  from  one  end  of  the  arch- 
ipelago to  the  other  to  visit  the  palace  of  Tyndareus 
and  to  pay  court  to  the  Wonder  Girl.  They  were  a 
goodly  throng,  these  suitors;  kings  one  and  all,  even 
though  most  of  their  kingdoms  were  smaller  than  Dela- 
ware. Here  are  a  few  names  culled  from  the  endless 
list: 

Ulysses,  craftiest  of  Greeks,  a  short-legged  man,  with 
the  upper  body  of  a  giant;  Agamemnon,  overlord  of 
all  Greece,  titular  King  of  Mycenae,  a  hot-tempered, 
long-winded  potentate;  Menelaus  of  Sparta,  Agamem- 
non's brother,  an  honest,  not  overbright,  kind-hearted 
chap,  who  loved  sport  better  than  statesmanship ;  Nes- 
tor, the  wisest  of  men,  (yet  old  enough  to  have  known 
better  than  to  come  a-courting,  for  already  his  hair 
and  beard  were  white)  ;  the  two  Ajaxes,  thickheads 
both,  one  of  whom  was  later  to  crown  a  silly  life  by 
defying  Jove's  lightning  to  mortal  combat;  Diomed, 
champion  heavyweight  battler  of  his  century;  Achilles, 
fiery  demigod  and  prehistoric  matinee  hero;  these  and 
many  another. 

Now,  in  that  benighted   age,   kings  had   a  way  of 


HELEN     OF     TROY  65 

gratifying  persona!  grudges  by  declaring  war  on  their 
fellow  sovereigns.  Tyndareus  was  a  shrewd  old  fel- 
low. Also,  he  was  fond  of  his  glorious  daughter,  and 
he  wanted  to  save  her  and  her  future  husband  from 
possible  misfortune.  So,  before  he  allowed  Helen  to 
make  her  choice  he  bound  each  and  all  of  the  suitors 
to  the  following  solemn  oath:  That  they  would  not 
only  abide  peacefully  by  Helen's  decision,  but  would 
pledge  themselves  to  fight  to  the  death  in  behalf  of 
the  contest's  winner  if,  at  any  future  time,  his  domestic 
peace  should  be  threatened,  or  his  wife  stolen  from 
him. 

This  pledge  was  not  as  fanciful  as  it  may  seem. 
For,  cave-man  tactics  of  "wooing  by  capture"  were 
still  more  or  less  in  vogue.  A  man  who  fell  in  love 
with  another's  wife  was  wont  to  kidnap  her  and  to 
defy  her  bereft  spouse  to  get  her  back. 

Thus,  Tyndareus  was  not  only  preventing  civil  war 
in  Greece,  but  he  was  making  it  prohibitively  perilous 
for  any  outsider  to  try  to  win  Helen.  Such  a  wooer 
would  find  himself  at  odds  with  practically  every 
country  in  the  whole  archipelago.  Yes,  decidedly 
Tyndareus  knew  what  he  was  about.  He  was  assuring 
his  daughter — as  far  as  was  humanly  possible — a  safe 
married  life. 

All  the  royal  suitors — being  very  much  in  love — 
were  in  a  condition  to  promise  anything.  They  bound 
themselves,  right  willingly,  to  the  oath  Tyndareus 
exacted;  even  Nestor,  who,  as  I  think  I  said,  was  old 


66  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

and  wise  enough  to  have  known  better.  It  is  a  supreme 
tribute  to  Helen's  glory  that  the  wisest  man  alive 
should  have  behaved  just  as  foolishly  over  her  as  did 
the  osseous-brained  Ajax  Telemon. 

The  oath  being  taken,  Helen's  choice  was  made 
known.  And,  out  of  the  ruck  of  greater  and  richer 
and  handsomer  men,  she  chose  the  plodding  Menelaus, 
King  of  Sparta. 

There  were  black  looks,  there  were  highly  unstoical 
gusts  of  anger — but  the  disappointed  suitors  made  the 
best  of  their  bad  luck.  After  consoling  themselves  by 
getting  gloriously  drunk  at  the  marriage  feast,  they 
called  it  a  day,  and  went  home;  not  one  of  them  realiz- 
ing how  fearfully  his  lovelorn  oath  was  one  day  to 
bind  him.  And  the  golden  Helen  departed  for  the 
prim  little,  grim  little  kingdom  of  Sparta  with  her  liege 
lord,  Menelaus. 

The  years  drifted  on,  lazily,  happily,  in  humdrum 
fashion.  If  Menelaus  were  not  inspiring  as  a  husband, 
he  was  at  least  pleasanter  to  live  with  than  a  cleverer 
man  might  have  been.  He  and  Helen  had  one  child, 
a  daughter,  Hermione. 

Placid  years  make  sweet  living,  but  poor  telling. 
So  let  us  get  along  to  the  day  when  heralds  from  the 
port  of  Pylos  brought  news  of  a  strange  prince's  arrival 
on  the  Spartan  shores.  The  messengers  knew  not  who 
the  stranger  might  be,  nor  whence  he  came.  But,  from 
his  retinue  and  dress  and  bearing,  they  judged  him 
yrorthy  to  be  a  guest  of  honor.  So  a  gorgeous  guard 


HELEN     OF     TROY  67 

was  sent  to  escort  him  to  the  palace,  and  great  prepara- 
tions were  made  there  to  receive  him. 

The  event  seems  to  warrant  a  more  Homeric  wealth 
of  language  than  I  can  compass,  but  it  would  be  hard 
not  to  drop  into  semi-stately — not  to  say  semi-Homeric 
and  wholly  plagiaristic — diction  over  it.  So  bear  with 
me.  It  won't  last  long. 

Adown  the  dry  white  road  that  ran  to  Pylos  through 
the  plain,  a  dust  cloud  was  advancing;  shields  of  bronze 
and  weapons  gleaming  through  it,  here  and  there, 
with  glimpses  of  purple  robes.  In  the  palace,  tables 
were  set  out,  with  fair  linen  on  them.  Meats  were 
brought  forth,  with  rare  wine  from  the  Ismarian  vine- 
yards to  the  north.  A  votive  heifer  was  driven  in, 
lowing,  from  the  fields,  for  the  guest  sacrifice.  Her 
horns  were  soon  sheathed  with  gold;  then  the  ax-man 
felled  and  killed  her  with  a  single  blow.  She  was 
quartered,  and  her  fat  was  laid  on  the  fire,  along  with 
barley  grain.  And  the  savor  of  the  sacrifice  rose,  grate- 
ful, to  high  Olympus. 

Now,  through  the  yellow  dust  cloud,  chariots  were 
to  be  seen.  A  hardy  band  of  mariners  plodded  beside 
the  wheels  and  behind.  They  were  bronzed  and  clear- 
eyed,  these  sea  rovers,  beguiling  the  journey  with  gay 
speech  and  with  deep,  mighty  laughs.  And  they 
shouted,  instead  of  speaking  as  do  landfolk. 

In  the  foremost  chariot  rode  two  men.  One  was 
King  Diocles  of  Pherae.  The  other  was  the  goodliest 
man  mortal  eye  ever  looked  upon.  A  mane  of  fine- 


68  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

spun  golden  hair  fell  over  the  shoulders  of  his  Sidonian 
robe;  his  face  was  like  the  sunshine,  and  his  eyes  were 
filled  with  the  gladness  of  living.  He  was  Paris,  son 
of  King  Priam,  and  a  prince  of  Troy.  And  his  right 
hand  gripped  a  shadow-casting  spear. 

In  the  banquet  hall,  when  the  visitors  and  their  host 
were  seated,  appeared  Helen,  the  wife  of  Menelaus. 
•with  her  little  daughter,  Hermoine.  When  the  cries  of 
hunger  and  of  thirst  had  died  down,  Helen  addressed 
the  strangers,  asking  no  direct  question — since  to  ques- 
tion a  guest  were  discourteous — but  saying  that  mayhap 
they  would  deign  to  explain  who  they  were,  and  why 
they  had  come  hither. 

Then  arose  Paris,  standing  by  the  board,  facing  the 
golden  Helen.  And  he  spoke  winged  words: 

It  was  prophesied  at  his  birth,  he  began,  that  he 
would  one  day  be  the  ruin  of  Troy.  To  prevent  his 
living  to  fulfill  his  ordained  fate,  his  father,  King  Priam 
— weeping  at  the  deed's  black  necessity — had  him 
borne  to  the  lonely  top  of  Mount  Ida,  there  to  die  of 
exposure,  or  at  the  fangs  of  wild  beasts.  But  a  great 
she-bear,  roaming  the  mountain  crest,  found  the  babe 
and  brought  him  down  to  her  cave,  and  there  laid  him 
among  her  own  soft-coated  young.  Here  he  was  found 
one  day  by  herdsmen,  among  whom  he  grew  up. 

In  time  he  owned  a  herd.  The  best-loved  of  his 
cattle  was  a  white  bull,  called  The  Star.  Now  it  came 
to  pass  that  King  Priam,  urged  on  by  a  dream,  sent 
his  slaves  to  Mount  Ida's  slopes  to  secure  the  finest 


HELEN     OF     TROY  69 

bull  that  grazed  there,  for  a  sacrifice  to  Neptune.  The 
slaves  came  upon  The  Star  and  drove  him  away  with 
them.  Paris  gave  chase,  but  in  vain.  Then  he  hastened 
to  the  city  of  Troy  to  beg  redress  from  the  king.  And 
as  he  entered  the  outer  gates  of  Priam's  palace,  his 
own  sister,  Cassandra,  recognized  him. 

Cassandra  was  a  prophetess.  Apollo  had  loved 
her,  and,  as  a  love  gift,  had  endowed  her  with  a  gift 
of  foretelling  all  things.  But  when  she  rejected  his 
suit,  he  willed  that  while  she  might  still  retain  the  gift 
of  prophecy,  her  forecasts  should  never  be  believed. 
So  now  her  words  were  laughed  to  scorn. 

But  Priam  questioned  the  mountaineer.  And,  by 
the  resemblance  the  youth  bore  to  his  father,  and  the 
ring  that  he  still  wore  around  his  neck,  where  it  had 
been  placed  when  he  had  been  taken  up  into  the 
mountain  as  an  infant,  the  king  at  last  knew  him. 
Great  was  his  joy. 

And  so,  elevated  to  his  rightful  princely  station, 
Paris  passed  the  next  few  years,  no  longer  in  the  harsh 
toil  and  on  the  poor  fare  of  a  herder,  but  as  a  king's 
son;  wholly  forgetting  CEnone,  the  forest  girl  of  Mount 
Ida  whom  he  had  wooed  and  won  and  deserted,  and 
whom  he  to-day  mentioned  merely  in  the  pride  of  a 
past  conquest. 

Now,  breaking  in  upon  Paris*  somewhat  long-winded 
story  of  his  life,  let  us  come  to  the  real  reason  of  his 
presence  in  Sparta.  The  Goddess  of  Strife  had  tried 
to  enliven  things  in  peaceful  Olympus  by  tossing  down 


70  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

in  front  of  Venus  and  Juno  and  Minerva  a  golden 
apple.  On  the  apple's  rind  was  graven  the  inscription: 

'Tor  the  most  beautiful." 

Straightway,  the  three  goddesses,  who  had  been 
tolerably  good  friends,  fell  to  quarreling  as  to  which 
should  have  the  apple  of  gold.  And  they  compromised 
by  leaving  the  decision  to  Paris.  Every  member  of 
the  trio  tried  secretly  to  bribe  him;  Juno  offering  him 
power,  Minerva  offering  him  wisdom,  Venus  promis- 
ing him  love — the  love  of  the  fairest  woman  on  earth. 
Being  very  young  and  very  human,  Paris  chose  Love; 
casting  aside  all  hope  of  power  and  of  wisdom  to  gain 
it.  And  Venus  bade  him  sail  forth  in  search  of  the 
Wonder  Woman  she  had  promised  him.  He  had  de- 
parted on  this  Quest  of  the  Golden  Girl,  and  fate  had 
led  him  to  Helen. 

I  am  not  going  to  touch  on  the  mythological  part 
of  Helen's  career,  more  than  I  can  help.  But  I  protest 
most  solemnly  that  the  foregoing  tale  of  Paris  and  the 
three  goddesses  is  not  mythology,  but  absolute  truth. 
It  may  never  have  happened ;  indeed,  it  could  not  have 
happened,  but  it  is  truth,  none  the  less.  If  you  doubt 
that  a  silly  apple  could  cause  such  strife  among  three 
erstwhile  friendly  deities  and  stir  up  unending  enmity 
and  discord  and  hatred,  just  remember  that  the  apple 
was  of  gold.  Wait  until  the  family  estate  is  divided 
among  the  heirs — the  heirs  who  have  hitherto  been 
such  good  friends — and  watch  what  the  Golden  Apple 
of  Discord  can  do  to  breed  hate  and  dissensions. 


HELEN     OF     TROY  71 

Those  old  Greeks  were  wise,  even  in  their  myths. 
They  knew  human  nature.  And  human  nature's  sole 
change  since  their  day  is  the  substitution  of  convention- 
ality for  simplicity.  At  heart,  there  is  no  difference. 

Take,  too,  Paris*  choice  of  love,  rather  than  of  wis- 
dom or  of  power.  When  we  read  about  that,  as 
children,  we  said  smugly:  "What  a  fool  Paris  was!" 
Then,  as  we  grew  older — Well,  if  Paris  was  a  fool, 
just  note  in  what  goodly  company  he  stands.  His 
compeers  in  the  same  divine  idiocy  are  such  immortals 
as  Mark  Antony,  Marie  Stuart,  Francis  I.,  almost  the 
whole  Bourbon  dynasty,  Sappho,  Cleopatra,  Solomon, 
and  a  sheaf  of  other  shimmeringly  splendid  sinners. 
They  were  monomaniacs,  all  of  them,  and  they  sold 
their  birthright  of  decency  for  a  mess  of  ambrosia;  too 
blinded  to  know  or  care  how  much  they  were  losing, 
and  for  how  barren  a  price.  Wherein,  their  particular 
brand  of  insanity  gives  them  full  right  and  privilege 
to  claim  kinship  with  the  Gadarene  swine  of  Holy 
Writ. 

Well,  then,  Paris  had  quested  forth  to  find  and  win 
the  most  beautiful  of  women.  And  he  found  her — at 
the  banquet  board  of  her  spouse,  Menelaus,  King  of 
Sparta. 

Long  he  abode,  an  honored  and  trusted  guest  in  his 
host's  palace.  And  Menelaus  suspected  nothing,  not 
even  that  a  man  of  godlike  beauty  and  comfortable 
dearth  of  morals  was  a  dangerous  visitor  in  the  home 
of  a  plodding,  middleaged  husband. 


72  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

One  night — while  Menelaus  snored  peacefully  in 
preparation  for  a  boar  hunt  he  had  planned  for  the 
next  day — Paris  and  Helen  stole  forth  together  in  the 
darkness  and  sped,  hand  in  hand,  to  Pylos,  where  the 
lover's  ship  was  in  waiting.  In  his  own  arms,  Paris 
bore  his  inamorata  from  shore  to  deck.  Away  across 
the  wine-hued  /Egean  fled  the  lovers,  to  Troy.  There 
they  were  wed;  regardless  of  the  fact  that  Helen  had 
left  a  perfectly  good  husband  alive  in  Greece.  The 
laws  against  bigamy — if  there  were  any  at  that  day — 
do  not  seem  to  have  been  very  rigidly  enforced;  nor 
do  those  laws*  fracturers  appear  to  have  lost  caste 
thereby. 

Mind  you,  Helen  -was  no  lovesick  girl  to  be  swept 
off  her  feet  by  an  impetuous  wooer  with  spun-gold 
hair  and  a  Romeo  manner.  When  Paris  stole  her  from 
Menelaus  and  married  her,  she  was  forty  years  old. 
But,  like  Ninon  de  Lenclos  and  Diane  de  Poictiers  and 
other  of  the  world's  true  super-women,  age  had  no 
power  to  mar  her.  Father  Time  could  not  pass  a  face 
like  hers  without  pausing  to  kiss  it;  but  the  kiss  was 
very  tender  and  loving,  and  it  left  in  its  wake  no 
wrinkles  or  telltale  lines.  Helen  was  ageless. 

Ilium  worshipped  beauty,  even  as  did  Greece.  And 
the  Trojans,  from  old  Priam  down,  hailed  their  new 
princess  with  rapture ;  all  save  Cassandra,  that  daughter 
of  Priam  who  was  blest  by  the  gift  of  prophecy  and 
cursed  by  the  incredulity  of  all  who  heard  her.  At 
sight  of  Helen,  Cassandra  shrieked  aloud: 


HELEN     OF     TROY  73 

'Trojans,  you  nurse  to  your  hearts  a  snake  that 
shall  sting  you  to  death!  You  cherish  a  firebrand  that 
shall  burn  our  city  to  the  dust!" 

And  she  fell,  writhing  and  foaming,  at  Helen's  feet. 
But  folk  laughed  at  the  forecast,  and  the  cheers  of 
welcome  drowned  the  wail  of  the  seeress. 

So  did  Argive  Helen  come  to  her  husband's  people. 
And  thus  did  her  beauty  win  all  hearts.  Paris  adored 
her  wildly,  uncontrollably,  to  the  hour  of  his  death. 
Her  passing  infatuation  for  him  soon  cooled  into  con- 
temptuous toleration.  And  for  the  second  time  in  her 
life  she  learned  that  a  husband  is  merely  what  is  left  of 
a  lover  after  the  nerve  has  been  extracted. 

Meantime,  Greece  was  humming  like  a  kicked  hor- 
net's nest.  Menelaus  learned  of  his  wife's  flight,  and 
with  whom  she  had  fled.  He  went,  heart-broken,  to 
his  brother  Agamemnon  for  help  in  avenging  his 
wrongs.  Agamemnon  not  only  reminded  him  of  the 
other  suitors*  promise  to  defend  the  honor  of  the  man 
whom  Helen  should  marry,  but  volunteered,  as  over- 
lord of  Greece,  to  force  them  to  keep  their  vows. 

Now,  this  offer  was  none  too  easy  to  carry  out.  It 
is  one  thing  to  make  the  maddest  pledge,  under  the 
drunkenness  of  love.  It  is  quite  another  thing  to  fulfill 
that  pledge  when  love  is  dead.  The  swain  who  at 
twenty  declares  to  a  girl:  "If  ever  you  want  me,  say  the 
word,  and  I  swear  I  will  come  to  you,  from  the  ends  of 
the  earth!"  would  be  horribly  embarrassed  if,  as  a 
sedate  husband  and  father  at  forty,  that  same  half- 


74  STORIES     OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

forgotten  sweetheart  should  hold  him  to  his  calf-love 
oath. 

So  it  was  with  Helen's  suitors-emeritus.  Long  ago 
they  had  loved  her.  She  had  married  some  one  else. 
And,  during  the  past  twenty  years,  other  interests  in 
their  lives  had  crowded  out  her  memory.  If  they 
thought  of  her  at  all,  it  was,  now  and  then,  to  court 
domestic  tempests  by  mentally  or  verbally  comparing 
her  golden  loveliness  and  eternal  youth  with  their  own 
•wives*  dumpy,  or  slatlike,  matronly  aspect. 

For  they  had  wives,  most  of  them,  by  this  time, 
•wives  and  children.  Just  stop  for  an  instant,  husbands 
all,  and  figure  to  yourselves  what  "would  happen  if  you 
should  come  home  to-morrow  night  and  break  to  your 
wives  the  tidings  that  you  were  about  to  go  to  war — 
for  the  sake  of  another  woman !  A  woman,  moreover, 
whom  you  had  once  adored,  and  whose  memory  had 
ever  stood,  •wistful,  winsome,  wraithlike,  between  your 
wives  and  you. 

So,  when  Agamemnon's  fiat  •went  forth  that  those 
long-dead  promises  •were  to  be  redeeemed  at  once, 
there  were  home  scenes  throughout  Greece  whose  bare 
recital  would  forever  have  crushed  the  spirit  of  Mor- 
monism.  War  must  have  seemed  almost  a  relief  to 
some  of  those  luckless  husbands  after  they  had  finished 
listening  to  their  wives'  remarks  on  the  subject.  For, 
of  all  overdue  debts  in  this  world  of  varied  indebted- 
ness, the  hardest  by  a  million-fold  to  pay  are  the  sight 
drafts  of  defunct  sentiment. 


HELEN     OF     TROY  75 

These  olden  heroes  were  not  especially  heroic  in  the 
crisis  that  threatened  them,  and  none  but  a  single  man 
will  be  unduly  harsh  with  them  for  their  reluctance. 
One  after  another,  they  sought  to  dodge  the  fulfillment 
of  their  pledges. 

Ulysses,  for  example,  after  an  interview  -with  his 
embarrassingly  faithful  wife,  Penelope — she  has  always 
reminded  me  of  Mrs.  Micawber — harnessed  oxen  to 
a  plow  and  proceeded  to  give  the  impression  that  he 
had  suddenly  gone  crazy,  by  plowing  furrows  in  the  salt 
sands  of  the  seashore.  Those  whose  minds  had  fled 
were  supposed  to  be  directly  under  divine  protection, 
and  naturally  such  people  were  never  called  upon  to 
fight  or  to  meet  any  other  obligation. 

Truly,  Ulysses  was  living  up  to  his  reputation  as  the 
craftiest  of  the  Greeks.  Yet  his  craft  was  put  to  naught 
by  the  wisdom  of  old  Nestor — one  of  the  few  suitors 
who  had  not  tried  to  crawl  out  of  his  agreement.  Nes- 
tor placed  Ulysses'  baby  son,  Telemachus,  on  the  sea- 
shore, in  the  path  of  the  advancing  oxen.  Ulysses 
turned  the  beasts  aside  to  keep  them  from  trampling 
the  child  to  death.  Whereat,  it  was  decided  that 
Ulysses  was  not  insane — at  least,  not  too  insane  to  do 
his  share  of  fighting — and  he  was  enrolled  as  one  of 
the  chiefs  of  the  Grecian  host. 

Having  been  caught,  Ulysses  set  out,  morbidly,  to 
get  even  with  Destiny  by  catching  others.  And  he,  as 
well  as  Nestor,  began  to  strip  away  the  subterfuges  of 
the  reluctant  kings.  Achilles,  for  instance,  tried  to 


76  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

escape  military  service  by  dressing  as  a  girl  and  hiding 
among  the  women  of  his  household.  Ulysses,  dis- 
guised as  a  peddler,  visited  these  women,  carrying  a 
basket  full  of  feminine  gewgaws.  At  the  bottom  or 
the  basket  lay  a  magnificent  sword.  While  the  women 
were  examining  the  jewelry  and  clothing  in  the  ped- 
dler's stock,  Achilles  caught  sight  of  the  sword.  For 
the  first  time,  he  showed  interest  in  the  intruder's  visit. 
Paying  no  heed  to  the  rest  of  the  wares,  he  picked  up 
the  sword  and  fell  to  examining  it  -with  a  professional 
interest.  At  once,  Ulysses  recognized  him  not  only 
as  a  man,  but  as  a  warrior;  and  the  sulky  Achilles  was 
forced  to  join  the  expedition. 

Day  and  night,  throughout  Greece,  the  smiths'  ham- 
mers clinked,  and  the  smithy  fires  roared.  Weapons 
were  forged;  armor  was  repaired;  army  equipments 
were  set  to  rights.  The  woods  and  hilltops  reechoed 
to  ax  blows,  as  great  trees  were  felled  for  ship  timber. 
At  last,  twelve  hundred  ships  lay  at  anchor,  waiting 
to  bear  the  avenging  host  to  Troy. 

All  this  preparation  was  a  matter  of  many  months, 
and  for  a  long  time  no  hint  of  it  reached  Troy.  Then 
— first  in  vague  rumor,  and  soon  in  form  not  to  be 
doubted — came  news  of  the  Greeks*  preparation  for 
war. 

By  this  time,  Helen  had  ceased  to  be  a  novelty  in 
Troy.  And  now  men  cursed  her,  beneath  their  breath, 
as  a  sorceress  who  was  to  bring  war  and  destruction 
upon  them.  Women  hated  her  as  the  cause  of  their 


HELEN     OF     TROY  77 

men's  possible  death  in  battle.  But  Priam,  and  the 
noblest  blest  of  his  sons — Hector — were  still  her  stanch 
champions.  And,  with  such  backing,  her  position  in 
the  city  was  at  least  outwardly  assured. 

Then  came  a  minor  tragedy,  a  foreshadowing  of  the 
wholesale  misfortunes  that  were  to  follow.  I  have  said 
that  when  Paris  was  still  a  herdsman  on  Mount  Ida,  he 
had  met  and  loved  a  forest  maid,  CEnone,  and,  on 
learning  that  he  was  a  prince,  he  had  promptly  de- 
serted her,  leaving  her  to  grief  and  loneliness.  CEnone 
had  borne  Paris  a  son — although  this  was  unknown  to 
him.  In  the  years  since  she  had  last  seen  the  fickle 
prince,  this  son  had  grown  up.  He  was  known  as 
"Corythus."  When  word  reached  CEnone  of  Helen's 
arrival  in  Troy,  she  sent  her  unfortunate  rival  a  message. 
She  wrote  the  message  on  birch  bark  and  dispatched  it, 
by  Corythus,  to  the  city. 

Corythus  arrived  at  the  palace,  and  was  led  to 
Helen's  bower,  where  he  begged  the  princess  to  dismiss 
her  maids,  as  he  was  the  bearer  of  a  word  for  her  ears 
alone.  Helen,  obeying,  received  from  him  the  folded 
birch  bark  and  opened  it.  She  read: 

O  thou  that  dost  scan  these  lines,  hast  thou  forgotten  quite 
thine  ancient  sin,  thy  palace,  thy  husband  and  child — even  as 
Paris  hath  forgotten  me?  Thou  shalt  not  forget.  For  I  send 
thee  my  curse,  with  which  I  shall  scourge  thee  till  I  die.  Soon 
Paris  must  look  into  the  eyes  of  death.  And  little  in  that  hour 
will  he  care  for  thy  sweet  lips,  thy  singing  voice,  thine  arms  of 
ivory,  thy  gold-red  hair.  Nay,  remembering  that  thou  hast 


78  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

cost  his  life,  he  will  bid  the  folk  that  hate  thee  have  their  joy, 
and  give  thee  to  the  mountain  beasts  to  tear,  or  burn  thy  body 
on  a  tower  of  Troy!  My  son — and  his — beareth  this  word  to 
thee. 

As  she  finished  reading,  Helen  fell,  in  a  swoon,  at 
Corythus'  feet.  The  youth  was  alarmed,  and  dropped 
on  his  knees  beside  her,  lifting  her  head.  And  at  that 
moment  Paris  entered  the  room. 

Seeing  a  stranger  kneeling  beside  Helen,  he  went 
•wild  with  jealous  rage.  Whipping  out  his  sword,  he 
sprang  upon  Corythus,  and  buried  the  blade  in  the 
lad's  neck.  Then  he  turned,  to  plunge  the  weapon 
into  Helen's  breast.  But,  as  he  turned,  he  saw  the 
birch-bark  message  on  the  floor  and  stooped  to  pick 
it  up.  Reading  it,  he  realized  what  he  had  done,  and 
whom,  in  his  jealous  frenzy,  he  had  killed.  He  flung 
himself,  wailing,  forth  from  the  palace  and  into  the 
night. 

Three  days  later,  Corythus  was  laid  on  his  funeral 
pyre  in  the  market  place  of  Troy.  As  Paris  was  ad- 
vancing with  the  lighted  torch,  (Enone  appeared.  She 
leaped  upon  the  pyre  and  shrieked  down  at  her  re- 
creant lover: 

"I  hear  the  prayer  that  thou  some  day  shall  make  in 
vain !  Thou  shalt  die,  and  leave  thy  love  behind  thee, 
for  another.  And  little  shall  she  love  thy  memory! 
But" — turning  upon  the  onlookers — "O  ye  foolish 
people — see!  What  death  is  coming  on  you  from  across 
the  waters?" 


HELEN     OF     TROY  79 

At  the  shrieked  words,  all  turned  and  looked  sea- 
ward. Bearing  down  on  the  coast,  in  a  driving  rain, 
oar  blades  flashing,  sails  straining  at  their  rigging,  came 
the  long-dreaded  Greek  fleet. 

The  Trojan  war  had  begun. 

For  a  highly  sporting  and  poetical  and  altogether 
deathless  account  of  that  contest,  I  commend 
you  to  Homer's  "Iliad."  This  is  the  story  of  Argive 
Helen,  not  an  uncensored  bulletin  from  the 
trenches. 

For  ten  years  the  conflict  waged,  with  varying  for- 
tunes. Again  and  again,  as  the  tide  of  battle  rolled 
up  to  the  city's  very  walls,  Helen  stood  on  the 
ramparts  and  watched  her  former  husband  and  the 
other  men  who  had  sworn  eternal  love  for  her,  fighting 
and  dying  for  her  worthless  sake. 

Once,  as  she  stood  thus,  she  found  at  her  side  the 
group  of  aged  men  who  were  Priam's  counselors. 
Gray-bearded  they  were,  and  feeble,  and  long  past 
the  time  when  love  can  set  the  pulse  a-flutter,  and 
they  hated  Helen  with  a  mighty  loathing  for  the  dis- 
aster she  had  brought  upon  their  dear  fatherland.  Even 
now,  they  had  come  forth  upon  the  ramparts  to  berate 
her  with  her  sin. 

Helen  turned  and  faced  them.  The  afternoon  sun 
poured  down  upon  her  white-clad  form  and  upon  her 
wonder  face  with  its  crown  of  ruddy  hair.  And,  at 
sight  of  her,  these  ancient  moralists  forgot  why  they 
had  come  hither.  With  one  voice,  cried  they  aloud 


80  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

that  the  love  of  so  glorious  a  woman  were  well  worth 
the  loss  of  Troy — aye,  of  all  the  world. 

A  hundred  commentators  have  said  that  this  tribute 
of  the  graybeards  is  the  most  supreme  compliment 
ever  paid  to  mortal  woman's  charms. 

Paris  was  at  last  challenged  by  Menelaus  to  mortal 
combat.  He  accepted  the  challenge,  but  later  fled, 
in  terror,  from  the  man  he  had  wronged.  Soon  after- 
ward, he  led  a  sortie  one  night  against  the  Greeks. 
A  man  on  the  outskirts  of  the  Grecian  camp  gave  the 
alarm  and  let  fly  an  arrow  at  the  advancing  Trojans. 
The  shaft  struck  Paris,  inflicting  a  mortal  wound. 

The  dying  man  was  borne  back  into  the  city,  and  to 
the  palace  where  the  thoroughly  disillusioned  Helen 
awaited  him.  Since  his  cowardice  in  fleeing  from  Men- 
elaus, she  had  taken  no  pains  to  hide  her  contempt  for 
him.  Now,  as  he  lay  dying,  she  looked  down  without 
emotion  on  the  sharer  of  her  crime.  And  Paris,  seeing 
her  bend  over  him,  spoke  the  pitiful  farewell  that  An- 
drew Lang's  verse  has  made  sublime,  and  that,  even 
in  mere  prose,  cannot  lose  all  its  beauty.  His  voice 
weak,  his  eyes  glazing,  he  said : 

"Long  ago,  dear,  we  were  glad — we  who  never 
more  shall  be  together.  Will  you  kiss  me,  once?  It 
is  ten  weary  years  since  you  have  smiled  on  me.  But, 
Helen,  say  farewell  with  your  old  smile!" 

Helen,  something  of  her  dead  tenderness  coming 
back  to  her,  kissed  him.  And,  with  her  kiss,  his  life 
went  out. 


HELEN     OF     TROY  81 

The  torch  was  set  to  the  unlucky  prince's  pyre.  From 
the  crowd  around  it  sprang  CEnone.  She  mounted 
the  blazing  pile  of  wood,  and  her  body  was  con- 
sumed with  that  of  the  man  who  was  not  worth  dying 
for. 

Helen,  almost  at  once,  married  Paris*  younger 
brother  Deiphobus. 

One  morning  the  Trojans  awoke  to  find  that  all  the 
Greeks  had  sailed  away.  Their  huts  stood  abandoned 
on  the  beach,  their  ships  were  nowhere  visible  on  the 
horizon.  Coming  back,  rejoicing,  to  the  city,  the  scout- 
ing party  that  brought  this  joyous  news  found  a 
monstrous  wooden  horse.  They  thought  that  the 
Greeks  had  built  it  and  left  it  there,  to  propitiate  Nep- 
tune for  a  speedy  and  safe  voyage  back  to  their  native 
shores. 

The  Trojans  bore  the  horse  within  the  city's 
walls,  to  keep  it  as  a  memento  of  the  great  war. 

Helen,  passing  near  the  wooden  beast  that  night, 
heard  within  it  the  clank  of  arms.  She  halted,  and, 
in  a  low  voice,  spoke  the  names  of  some  of  her  old 
suitors.  Ulysses  answered,  bidding  her  open  a  con- 
cealed trapdoor  in  the  horse's  side.  She  obeyed.  Out 
climbed  a  score  of  Greeks.  Guided  by  Helen,  they 
unbarred  the  city  gates  to  the  horde  outside  who  had 
returned  in  their  vessels.  One  of  the  greatest  massacres 
of  the  ages  followed.  Babies  were  butchered  as  they 
slept,  women  were  cut  down  as  they  ran  from  their 
beds,  half-wakened  men  were  slaughtered  like  sheep. 


82  STORIES     OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

Then  the  torch  was  applied,  and  all  Troy  wad  burned 
to  ashes. 

Helen  was  saved  from  death  by  Ulysses,  who  took 
her  to  Menelaus  and  demanded  kindly  treatment  for 
her,  pleading  in  her  behalf  that  she  had  at  the  last 
betrayed  the  Trojans  by  setting  free  the  Greeks  within 
the  wooden  horse. 

There  was  no  need  for  his  mediation.  No  man 
could  harbor  wrath  against  the  golden  Helen.  Mene  > 
laus,  at  the  very  first  meeting  of  their  eyes,  forgave  and 
forgot.  He  opened  his  arms  and  his  heart  to  the 
Woman  who  had  wrecked  his  life  and  who  had  brought 
to  death  thousands  of  gallant  men.  Back  to  Greece 
he  bore  her;  back  to  Sparta,  where  he  installed  her 
once  more  as  his  queen.  He  had  first  brought  her 
hither  in  triumph  as  a  mere  slip  of  a  girl,  to  people  who 
had  received  her  with  pride.  Now  she  came  to  Sparta 
again,  a  woman  of  over  fifty,  to  a  populace  who  cursed 
and  reviled  her.  Widowed  wives  and  weeping  mothers 
spat  at  her  as  she  passed  them  on  the  way  to  the 
palace. 

But  none  of  this  was  as  hard  to  bear  as  had  been 
Agamemnon's  parting  words — spoken  in  her  presence 
— to  the  Greek  army  on  the  shores  of  Ilium.  Though 
his  brother  was  minded  to  forgive,  Agamemnon  was 
not.  And  to  the  assembled  host  he  had  shouted: 

"O  ye  who  overlong  have  borne  the  yoke,  behold 
this  woman,  the  very  fountain  of  your  sorrows!  For 
her  ye  left  your  dear  homes  long  ago,  but  now  the  black 


HELEN     OF     TROY  83 

ships  rot  from  stern  to  prow,  and  who  knows  if  ye 
shall  see  your  own  again?  Aye,  and  if  homes  ye  win, 
ye  yet  may  find — ye  that  the  winds  waft  and  the  waters 
bear — that  you  are  quite  gone  out  of  mind.  Your 
fathers,  dear  and  old,  died  dishonored  there;  your 
children  deem  ye  dead,  and  will  not  share  their  lands 
with  you;  on  mainland  or  on  isle,  strange  men  are 
wooing  now  the  women  you  wedded.  For  love  doth 
lightly  beguile  a  woman's  heart. 

"These  sorrows  hath  Helen  brought  on  you.  So 
fall  upon  her  straightway,  that  she  die,  and  clothe 
her  beauty  in  a  cloak  of  stone!" 

The  crowd  had  armed  itself  with  stones  as  Agamem- 
non began  to  speak.  But,  as  he  denounced  her,  they 
were  looking  at  her  upturned  face.  And  from  their 
nerveless  hands  the  stones  fell  to  earth.  They  found 
her  too  beautiful  for  death. 

Agamemnon,  looking  at  her,  cried : 

"Hath  no  man,  then,  avenged  his  wrongs  by  slaying 
thee?  Is  there  none  to  shed  thy  blood  for  all  that 
thou  hast  slain?  To  wreak  on  thee  the  wrongs  that 
thou  hast  •wrought?  Nay,  as  mine  own  soul  liveth, 
there  is  one.  Before  a  ship  takes  sail,  I  will  slay  thee 
•with  mine  own  hand  I" 

But,  as  he  advanced  toward  her,  sword  in  hand, 
her  beauty  seized  him  in  its  spell.  He  paused,  irreso- 
lute, then  turned  away. 

For  many  years  thereafter,  Helen  and  Menelaus 
dwelt  together  at  Sparta.  And  because  the  years 


84  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

were  happy,  both  history  and  fable  are  silent  about 
them,  save  that  Menelaus  was  once  more  as  slavishly 
enamored  of  his  wife  as  in  their  first  months  together. 
Helen,  too,  was  well  content  with  this  safe  haven  after 
her  tempest-tossed  decade — "Peace  after  war;  port 
after  stormy  seas;  rest  after  toil." 

The  hatred  of  the  people  at  large  did  not  much 
distress  her.  Through  the  latticed  windows  of  the 
palace  filtered  the  growls  of  the  populace,  droning  and 
futile  as  the  roar  of  distant  breakers.  And  even  as 
breakers  have  no  peril  for  landsmen,  so,  safe  in  her 
husband's  home,  Helen  did  not  fear  the  grumbles  of 
the  folk  he  ruled. 

Then,  in  the  fullness  of  his  age,  Menelaus  died,  and 
all  at  once  the  situation  changed.  Helen  was  no  longer 
safe  ashore,  listening  to  the  breakers;  she  was  in  their 
power.  Her  husband's  protecting  influence  gone,  she 
was  at  the  mercy  of  his  subjects;  at  the  mercy  of  the 
merciless. 

The  women  of  Sparta  banded  together  and,  in 
dangerous  silence,  advanced  upon  the  palace.  These 
were  the  mothers,  the  wives,  the  daughters,  the  sweet- 
hearts, of  men  who  had  left  their  white  bones  on  the 
Trojan  seacoast,  that  the  golden  Helen  might  again 
rest  snug  in  the  shelter  of  Menelaus"  love.  There  was 
not  a  doubt  as  to  the  militants'  purpose.  And  as  they 
drew  near  the  palace,  Helen  fled.  One  or  two  slaves, 
still  faithful  to  her,  smuggled  the  fugitive  out  through 
a  rear  gateway  and  through  the  forests  toward  the  sea- 


HELEN     OF     TROY  85 

shore.  There,  a  handful  of  silver  bought  a  fisher's 
boat  and  the  service  of  his  crew. 

And  once  more  across  the  "wine-hued  /Egean" 
fared  the  golden  Helen,  not  this  time  in  girlish  light- 
heartedness  to  her  husband's  home,  or,  in  guilty  hap- 
piness, fleeing  from  that  house  by  night  with  the  man 
who  had  bewitched  her,  but  a  fugitive  scourged  forth 
from  the  only  home  she  knew. 

Storm-driven,  her  boat  at  last  was  blown  ashore  on 
the  island  of  Rhodes.  There  she  found  she  had  been 
running  toward  ill  fortune  just  as  rapidly  as  she  had 
thought  she  was  running  away  from  it.  The  Queen  of 
Rhodes  had  lost  a  husband  in  the  Trojan  war.  And, 
like  every  other  woman  on  earth,  she  had  sworn  the 
vengeance  oath  against  Helen.  So,  the  story  goes, 
when  the  fugitive  -was  brought  before  the  Rhodian 
queen,  the  latter  gave  a  single  curt  order.  In  obedi- 
ence to  that  fierce  command,  Helen  was  led  forth  and 
hanged;  her  executioners  being  blindfolded,  that  they 
might  not  balk  at  destroying  the  world's  loveliest 
creation. 

So  perished  the  golden  Helen.  For  her  sin,  she  is 
known  to  fame  as  "Helen  of  Troy,"  not  "Helen  of 
Sparta,"  or  even  "Helen  of  Argos."  Posterity  has 
branded  her,  thus,  with  the  name  of  the  land  she 
destroyed,  instead  of  the  land  of  her  birth. 

Poets  and  dreamers  of  dreams,  even  in  her  own. 
century,  have  said  that  Helen  did  not  die;  that  loveli- 
ness such  as  hers  could  not  be  destroyed,  any  more. 


86  STORIES     OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

than  can  the  smile  of  the  springtide  or  the  laughter 
of  the  sea.  They  say  she  escaped  the  Rhodians  and 
set  sail  once  more  upon  her  wanderings.  From  shore 
to  shore  she  voyaged, — ageless,  divine,  immortal,  as 
eternal  as  Love  itself.  Ever,  where  she  went,  men 
adored  her  and  besought  her  to  remain  among  them 
to  bless  or  curse  their  lives.  But,  ever,  women  banded 
together  to  drive  her  forth  again  upon  her  endless 
wanderings. 

One  legend  tells  of  her  sojourn  in  Egypt,  and  of 
her  meeting,  there,  Ulysses,  "sacker  of  cities."  Pene- 
lope was  dead,  and  Ulysses  had  recommenced  his 
voyaging.  He  and  Helen  met,  and  the  old,  old  love 
of  nearly  a  half  century  earlier  flared  into  new  flame. 
And,  as  ever,  Helen's  love  brought  death  in  its  wake. 
For  the  Sacker  of  Cities  fell  in  battle  within  a  few  weeks 
after  their  reunion. 

Another  and  more  popular  legend  is  that  Helen,  in 
return  for  everlasting  youth,  formed  a  highly  discredit- 
able business  partnership  with  Satan,  whereby  she  was 
to  serve  as  his  lure  for  the  damning  of  men's  souls. 
Do  you  recall,  in  Marlowe's  "Doctor  Faustus,"  it  was 
by  promise  of  Helen's  love  that  the  devil  won  Faustus 
over  to  his  bargain?  There  is  a  world  of  stark  adora- 
tion in  Faustus'  greeting  cry,  as,  for  the  first  time,  he 
beholds  the  enchantress: 

"Is  this  the  face  that  launched  a  thousand  ships 
And  burned  the  topless  towers  of  Ilium? 
Sweet  Helen,  make  me  immortal  with  a  kiss  I" 


HELEN     OF     TROY  87 

She  granted  him  the  kiss,  but  no  immortality;  in- 
stead, his  meed  was  damnation,  like  that  of  her  million 
other  swains. 

Goethe,  in  the  second  part  of  his  "Faust,"  makes 
her  Marguerite's  successor  in  Faust's  love.  And  one 
poet  after  another  has  amplified  the  theory  that  she 
lives  on  through  the  ages,  drawing  men's  souls  from 
them. 

And  the  poets  are  often  right,  where  sane  folk  are 
wrong.  The  golden  Helen — typifying  the  blind,  all- 
engulfing  love  that  laughs  alike  at  reason  and  at 
destruction — lives  and  shall  live  while  men  are  men. 
She  lived  as  Cleopatra,  for  whom  Antony  deemed  the 
world  well  lost.  She  lives  as  the  hideously  coifFured 
shopgirl  with  the  debutante  slouch  and  the  blue-white 
powdered  nose,  for  whom  a  ten-dollar-a-week  clerk 
robs  the  till  and  goes  to  jail.  And,  as  in  the  earliest 
days  of  her  mortal  wanderings,  men  ever  stretch  forth 
their  arms  to  her  as  she  passes,  and  beseech  her  to 
stay  her  flight  long  enough  to  let  them  damn  themselves 
for  her.  And,  as  in  those  early  days,  women  ever  band 
together  in  righteous  wrath  to  drive  her  forth  into  the 
darkness. 

Poor  Helen!  Or — is  it  happy  Helen?  I  think  the 
former  adjective  is  to  be  chosen.  For  the  game  she 
plays  can  end  only  in  ultimate  loss  to  herself.  And 
that  game's  true  winners,  in  the  long  run,  are  the  very 
women  who,  fearing  her  spell  over  their  loved  ones, 
harry  her  forth  to  new  wanderings.  This  thought 


88  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

should  comfort  them  in  the  inevitable  hour  when 
golden  Helen's  shadow  shall  fall  momentarily  athwart 
their  placid  lives. 

The  prim  path  must  inevitably  triumph   over   the 
primrose  path. 


CHAPTER  FIVE 

MADAME  JUMEL 

NEW  YORK'S  FIRST  OFFICIAL  HEART 
BREAKER 

FAR  to  the  north,  on  New  York  City's  westerly  side 
— on  One  Hundred  and  Sixtieth  Street,  near  St. 
Nicholas  Avenue — stands  almost  the  sole  Amer- 
ican memorial  to  a  super-woman.  It  takes  the  shape 
of  a  colonial  dwelling,  two  and  a  half  stories  high, 
white,  crowned  by  a  railed  gazebo,  and  with  rear 
extensions  and  columns  and  the  rest  of  the  ar- 
chitectural fantasies  wherein  our  new-world  ancestors 
rejoiced. 

It  is  called  the  Jumel  mansion,  after  Madame  Jumel, 
although  it  originally  belonged  to  Mary  Morris,  an 
earlier  and  more  beautiful  man-slayer,  at  whose  dainty 
feet  George  Washington,  with  solemn,  but  futile,  pro- 
testations, deposited  his  heart ;  and  although  the  woman 
whose  name  it  bears  ended  her  days  there,  not  as 
Madame  Jumel,  but  as  Mrs.  Burr. 

The  house  once  stood  far  in  the  silent  country.  But 
the  thin,  throbbing  island's  life  crawled  northward 


90  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

inch  by  inch,  until  to-day  the  mansion  crouches,  mis- 
cast and  bewildered,  amid  a  forest  of  new  and  top- 
heavy  flat  houses — happy  hunting  ground  for  none- 
too-rich  homeseekers — and  is  shaken  by  the  jar  of 
"L"  and  New  York  Central  trains. 

Poor  old  house!  Bewigged  and  small-clothed 
Great-gran*  ther  Peregrine,  from  Pompton,  caught  in 
the  screaming  eddy  of  a  subway  rush-hour  crowd  at 
the  Grand  Central! 

So  much  for  rhapsody.  The  Jumel  place  is  worth 
it.  For  there  ghosts  walk — the  stately,  lavender- 
scented  old  villains  and  villainettes  who  made  up  New 
York's  smart  set  a  century  and  a  quarter  ago,  when 
flats  were  called  "rookeries"  and  polite  folk  would 
scarce  mention  such  things. 

In  those  days,  when  any  theme  was  too  darkly  dis- 
reputable or  indelicate  for  discussion — and  a  few 
things  still  were,  in  that  ante-white-slave  era — people 
were  prone  to  refer  to  such  doubtful  topics  as 
"shrouded  in  mystery,"  and  to  let  it  go  at  that.  There 
was  more  than  one  event  in  the  cradle-to-grave  career 
of  Madame  Jumel  that  called  for  and  received  the 
kindly  mystery  shroud.  As  far  as  coherence  will  allow, 
let  us  leave  the  shroud  snugly  tucked  around  those 
events.  I  mention  it,  at  the  outset,  only  because  more 
than  one  chronicler  has  used  it  to  account  for  hiati — (or 
is  it  hiatuses?  The  former  sounds  more  cultured,  some- 
how— )  in  the  lady's  career.  Whereas,  nearly  all,  if 
not  quite  all,  these  gaps  can  be  bridged  quite  easily 


MADAME    JUMEL  91 

by  well-authenticated  facts.  Some  of  them  too  -well 
authenticated  for  complete  comfort. 

And  so  to  the  story. 

Aboard  a  ship  bound  north  from  the  West  Indies, 
one  day  in  1  769,  a  woman  died,  a  few  hours  after 
the  birth  of  her  baby  daughter.  It  was  not  necessary 
to  remove  any  wedding  ring  from  the  dead  mother's 
finger  before  burying  her  at  sea.  One  story  says  that 
her  orphaned  daughter's  father  had  been  a  French 
sailor  named  Capet.  Another  and  wholly  diverse  tale 
says  that  the  baby  was  not  born  at  sea  at  all,  but  in 
the  Providence,  Rhode  Island,  poorhouse,  and  of 
unknown  parentage.  You  see  the  shroud  of 
mystery  was  pressed  into  service  very  early  in  the 
biography. 

In  any  event,  soon  after  the  ship  touched  at  Provi- 
dence, a  Rhode  Island  tradesman's  wife  was  so  at- 
tracted by  the  prettiness  of  the  solitary  girl  baby  as 
to  adopt  her.  At  the  subsequent  christening,  the  rather 
uninspiring  name  of  Eliza  Bowen  was  bestowed  on  the 
child.  No  one  seems  to  know  why.  More  mystery, 
and  not  a  particularly  thrilling  one  at  that. 

In  strait-laced  ways  and  to  all  demure  modesty, 
Eliza  was  reared.  And  at  fifteen  she  was  not  only  the 
prettiest  girl  in  Rhode  Island,  but  one  of  the  cleverest 
and — so  declared  the  pious — one  of  the  very  worst. 
In  those  days  and  in  New  England,  it  was  delightfully 
easy  to  acquire  a  reputation  for  wickedness  by  merely 
failing  to  conform  to  all  the  ideas  of  the  blue-law 


92  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMENr 

devotees.  Shan't  we  give  Betty  Bowen — her  com- 
monly used  name — the  benefit  of  the  doubt? 

We  know  she  was  not  only  blessed  with  unwonted 
beauty,  but  with  an  exceptional  mind.  She  had,  in 
full  measure,  even  in  girlhood,  the  nameless  and  ir- 
resistible charm  of  the  super-woman.  She  was  reckless, 
high  of  spirit,  impatient  of  restraint;  inclined  to  listen 
over-kindly,  perhaps,  to  the  pleadings  of  her  countless 
rural  admirers. 

Then,  when  she  was  only  seventeen,  Colonel  Peter 
Croix  came  into  her  life.  Croix  was  a  former  officer 
in  the  British  army  and  lived  in  New  York.  He  had 
plenty  of  money,  and  was  more  or  less  what,  a  century 
later,  would  have  been  called  a  "rounder." 

How  this  middle-aged  Lothario  chanced  to  meet 
the  Rhode  Island  belle,  no  one  knows.  But  meet  her 
he  did.  He  was  the  first  man  of  the  world  who  had 
come  into  Betty's  rustic  life.  By  contrast  with  the  local 
swains,  he  was  irresistible.  Or  so  she  found  him.  At 
all  events,  she  did  not  resist.  She  eloped  with  him, 
and  Rhode  Island  knew  her  no  more.  Her  real  career 
as  a  heart  breaker  had  set  in. 

To  New  York,  Colonel  Croix  brought  his  inamorata. 
There  he  installed  her  in  a  stately  country  house  at 
Thirty-fourth  Street  and  Fifth  Avenue,  on  the  spot 
where,  afterward,  A.  T.  Stewart's  white  marble  domi- 
cile used  to  excite  the  out-of-towners*  awe,  and  where 
now  a  trust  company's  building  stands. 

Betty  wore  amazingly  costly  clothes,   paying  for  a 


MADAME    JUMEL  93 

single  dress  far  more  than  for  her  year's  wardrobe  in 
Rhode  Island.  Croix  festooned  jewelry,  Christmas- 
tree-like,  over  her  neck,  hair,  and  hands.  She  blos- 
somed like  the  rose.  Croix,  inordinately  proud  of  his 
conquest,  also  brought  shoals  of  his  friends  to  call, 
which  was  a  mistake ;  for  Betty  had  no  leanings  toward 
monopolies. 

Like  the  hackneyed,  but  ever-useful,  meteor,  Betty 
flashed  upon  stark  young  eighteenth-century  New  York. 
The  city — so  far  as  its  male  population  was  concerned 
— threw  up  both  hands  in  blissful  surrender. 

Croix's  friends — some  of  them  rounders  like  him- 
self, some  of  them  fat,  solid,  but  beauty-loving  finan- 
ciers— formed  a  court  of  beauty  around  the  fair  new- 
comer. Betty's  consummate  charm  drew  to  this  court 
other  and  loftier  men,  too. 

For  example,  one  of  her  foremost  adorers  was  a 
brilliant,  magnetic  young  statesman  whose  birth  was 
perhaps  as  unblest  as  her  own,  but  whose  self-made 
name  was  already  beginning  to  ring  through  America. 
He  was  Alexander  Hamilton.  He  had  a  high-born 
and  attractive  wife  of  his  own,  and  an  adoring  nestful 
of  children.  But  Hamilton  believed  in  monopolies  no 
more  than  did  Betty,  and  he  became  her  adorer. 

Another  of  the  higher  type  of  men  who  came  a- 
courting  Betty  was  a  statesman  of  almost  equal  fame — 
a  little  fellow,  scarce  five  feet  four  inches  tall  and  slight 
of  build,  whose  strikingly  handsome  face  was  lighted 
by  enormous  black  eyes  almost  snake-like  in  their  mes- 


94  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

meric  power — particularly  over  women.  He  was 
Aaron  Burr. 

Burr  was  a  lady-killer  of  the  first  order.  He  was 
not  a  man  of  bad  morals.  He  was  simply  a  man  of 
no  morals  at  all.  But  he  was  also  a  man  of  no  fear, 
and  a  genius  withal.  He  knelt,  not  in  submission,  but 
in  ironic  admiration  before  Betty.  And  she,  like  fifty 
other  women,  was  swayed  by  his  hypnotic  eyes  and 
his  wondrous  love  eloquence. 

At  the  house  of  which  Croix  had  made  Betty  the 
chatelaine,  Burr  and  Hamilton  often  met,  but  never 
at  the  wish  of  either.  For  they  hated  every  bone  in 
each  other's  bodies. 

They  had  been  at  loggerheads  as  mere  lads,  when 
together  they  had  served  on  General  Washington's 
staff  during  the  Revolutionary  War.  Afterward,  in 
social  and  political  life,  they  had  clashed,  and  clashed 
fiercely.  Now,  as  rivals  for  the  interest  of  the  volatile 
Betty,  their  smoldering  hate  flamed  forth  lurid  and 
deathless. 

And  thenceforth,  fanned  by  new  political  and  other 
causes,  that  death  hate  grew.  It  came  to  a  head  seven 
years  later,  when,  in  the  gray  of  a  chilly  morning,  the 
lifelong  rivals  faced  each  other,  pistol  in  hand,  in  the 
fields  beyond  Weehawken  Heights;  and  when,  at  the 
first  volley,  Hamilton  sprang  high  in  air,  then  crashed 
to  the  earth,  mortally  wounded. 

Yes,  in  her  time  Betty  had — directly  or  indirectly — 
much  to  answer  for. 


MADAME     JUMEL  95 

George  Washington  Bowen,  in  after  years,  swore 
that  he  was  the  son  of  Betty  and  of  the  Father  of  his 
Country.  This  the  Jumels  have  fiercely  denied. 

Among  the  business-men  guests  Croix  brought  to 
see  Betty  was  an  enormously  rich  old  French  wine 
merchant,  Stephen  Jumel  by  name.  This  was  in  1  804 
— the  year  of  Hamilton's  death.  Jumel  was  fifty; 
Betty  was  thirty-five.  Jumel  was  passing  rich; 
Betty  had  shrewdness  enough  to  realize  that  her  own 
fortunes,  under  her  present  circumstances,  depended 
solely  on  her  looks  and  her  charm.  As  beauty  is  not 
eternal  and  as  charm  sometimes  fails  to  outlive  it,  the 
super-woman  deemed  it  wise  to  accept  the  infatuated 
wine  merchant's  offer  of  marriage. 

Indeed,  she  is  said  to  have  angled  with  Napoleonic 
strategy  for  that  same  offer,  and  to  have  won  it  only 
after  a  sharp  struggle  of  -wits.  Jumel  was  no  fit  op- 
ponent for  her,  then  or  ever  after.  From  the  first, 
they  appear  to  have  had  but  a  single  will  between  them 
— and  that  was  hers. 

On  April  1  7,  1 804,  Betty  and  Jumel  were  married 
in  St.  Peter's  Church  in  Barclay  Street.  The  wedding's 
record  still  stands  in  the  parish  archives.  So  does  the 
statement  made  on  that  occasion  by  Betty — a  state- 
ment charmingly  at  variance  with  all  other  records  of 
her  origin.  For  in  the  church  register  she  wrote  that 
she  was  born  in  1777  and  was  the  daughter  of  Phoebe 
and  John  Bowen — the  latter  a  drowned  sea  captain. 

New  York,  having  a  somewhat  tenacious  memory, 


96  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER- WOMEN 

eyed  the  bride  askance — or  so  she  fancied.  And,  like 
many  a  later  American,  she  sought  to  cover  any  possi- 
ble reputation  scars  by  a  European  veneer.  She  per- 
suaded her  husband  to  sell  out  some  of  his  New  York 
interest  and  to  take  her  to  Paris  to  live.  Which,  ever 
obedient,  he  did. 

Napoleon  I.  was  at  the  heyday  of  his  glory.  About 
him  was  a  court  circle  that  did  not  look  overclosely  into 
peoples*  antecedents.  Napoleon's  brother-in-law, 
Murat,  had  started  life  as  a  tavern  waiter;  Napoleon 
himself  was  the  son  of  a  poor  Corsican  lawyer  and  had 
never  been  able  to  learn  to  speak  French  without  a 
barbarous  accent.  As  for  his  sister,  Pauline,  if  "a 
virtuous  woman  is  a  crown  to  her  husband,"  Pauline's 
spouse,  Prince  Borghese,  had  not  a  ghost  of  a  chance 
of  skipping  into  the  king  row.  Nor  was  Napoleon's 
first  wife,  Josephine,  of  flawless  repute.  Altogether, 
it  was  a  coterie  unlikely  to  ask  many  questions  about 
Betty's  early  history. 

The  fascinations  of  Madame  Jumel  and  the  vast 
wealth  of  Monsieur  Jumel  were  not  to  be  withstood. 
Speedily  the  husband  and  wife  were  in  the  turgid  center 
of  things;  part  and  parcel  of  imperial  court  life. 

As  Betty  had  charmed  level-headed  New  York,  there 
is  no  need  to  describe  in  windy  detail  what  she  did  to 
Paris.  Her  conquests  there — like  the  stars  of  the 
Milky  Way — shine  indistinct  and  blurred  because  of 
their  sheer  numbers.  But  through  the  silvery  blur 
gleams  forth  the  name  of  Lafayette,  The  old  marquis 


MADAME    JUMEL  97 

was  delighted,  at  sight,  with  the  lovely  young  Ameri- 
can; and  he  eagerly  offered  to  act  as  her  sponsor  at 
court.  Which  he  did,  to  the  amusement  of  many 
and  to  the  indefinite  advancement  of  Betty's  social 
hopes. 

The  great  Napoleon  glanced  in  no  slightest  disfavor 
on  Lafayette's  social  protegee.  He  willingly  set  the 
seal  of  imperial  approval  on  the  court's  verdict  The 
emperor  was  Stephen  Jumel's  idol.  Himself  a  self- 
made  man,  the  old  merchant  worshiped  this  self-made 
demigod,  the  model  and  unattainable  example  of 
every  self-making  man  since  his  day. 

Jumel's  hero-worship  took  a  practical  form.  He 
placed  his  resources  at  the  emperor's  service,  and  once 
tactlessly,  but  generously,  offered  his  own  wealth  and 
his  New  York  home  as  solace  and  refuge  in  the  in- 
creasingly probable  event  of  the  emperor's  mislaying 
his  crown.  To  which  Napoleon  replied — speaking,  as 
ever,  to  the  gallery: 

"Whatever  reverses  Fortune  may  inflict  on  me, 
Duty  \vill  chain  me  to  France.  It  would  be  unworthy 
my  greatness  and  an  insult  to  my  empire  for  me  to 
seek  asylum  across  the  seas." 

Yet,  when  the  inevitable  Day  dawned,  the  fugitive 
emperor  made  plans  to  do  that  very  thing.  And  Jumel 
met  him  more  than  halfway  by  crossing  from  New 
York  to  Havre  on  his  own  yacht — the  Elizabeth,  named 
for  his  wife — and  seeking  to  bear  away  his  fallen  idol 
to  safety.  The  plan,  of  course,  fell  through,  and  Na- 


98  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

poleon  in  consequence  was  almost  the  only  Bonaparte 
•who  did  not  sooner  or  later  come  to  New  York. 

Imperial  friendship  and  a  gloriously  extravagant — 
and  extravagantly  glorious — wife  are  things  to  brag 
of.  They  are  splendid  advertisements.  But  they  are 
not  on  the  free  list.  In  fact,  they  rip  hideous  breaches 
in  the  solidest  wall  of  wealth.  They  played  havoc 
with  Papa  Jumel's  supposedly  boundless  fortune.  One 
morning  in  Paris,  the  Jumels  awoke  to  find  themselves 
nastily  close  to  bankruptcy. 

The  French  court  was  emphatically  no  fitting  place 
wherein  to  go  bankrupt.  The  scared  Jumels  realized 
this.  Back  they  scurried  to  New  York ;  in  that  bourne 
of  fast-made  and  faster-lost  fortunes  to  face  what  the 
future  might  bring. 

And  now,  all  praise  to  Betty  Jumel,  erstwhile  queen 
of  money  wasters!  Instead  of  repining,  or  blaming 
her  husband  for  letting  her  break  him,  or  flitting  to 
some  wooer  whose  wealth  was  still  intact,  she  did  the 
very  last  thing  her  past  would  have  led  any  one  to 
expect. 

She  became,  in  effect,  her  husband's  business  part- 
ner. She  displayed  a  genius  for  finance.  It  must  have 
been  stark  genius,  for  her  personal  experience  in  the 
credit  side  of  the  money  ledger  was  nil.  More  through 
his  wife's  aid  than  through  his  own  sound  business 
acumen,  Papa  Jumel  began  to  win  back  the  ground 
Betty  had  so  industriously  helped  him  to  lose. 

One  daring  and  lucky  venture  followed  another.     In 


MADAME    JUMEL  99 

an  incredibly  short  time  the  Jumels  were  again  num- 
bered among  the  very  richest  people  in  America.  Once 
more  Betty  launched  on  a  career  of  luxury;  but  now 
and  ever  after  she  kept  just  within  her  abundant  re- 
sources. Bankruptcy  was  a  peril  forever  banished. 

Betty,  you  see,  did  not  belong  to  the  type  of  fool 
who  runs  his  head  twice  into  the  same  hornet's  nest. 
There  really  was  no  need  for  such  monotony.  There 
were  plenty  of  hornets'  nests. 

The  first  expenditure,  to  celebrate  the  new  fortune, 
was  the  buying  of  the  big  white  house  far  away  on  the 
hillock  above  the  Harlem  River;  a  long,  long  coach 
drive,  up  the  Broad  Way,  from  the  city's  fashionable 
residence  district  to  the  south  of  Duane  Street.  Re- 
member, this  was  a  full  twenty  years  before  the 
Southern  merchant  made  his  historic  speech:  "When 
I  come  to  New  York  on  business,  I  never  think  of  stop- 
ping at  the  Astor  House.  It's  much  too  far  uptown 
for  a  busy  man." 

The  house  Betty  made  her  husband  buy  had  been 
built  years  earlier  by  Colonel  Roger  Morris,  after  he 
married  Mary  Phillipse,  the  colonial  belle,  whose  father 
owned  most  of  Westchester  County  and  lived  in  a 
manor  house  there  among  his  vassals  like  a  feudal  lord. 

To  this  abode  moved  the  Jumels.  Thither  they 
brought  a  retinue  of  servants  whose  numbers  amazed 
the  thrifty  New  Yorkers.  Here,  too,  were  deposited 
such  furniture  as  New  York  had  seldom  seen — a  mar- 
velously  hideous  marble-top  table  given  to  Papa  Jumel 


100  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER- WOMEN 

by  the  Sultan  of  Turkey;  a  set  of  chairs  that  had  been 
Napoleon's;  a  truly  gaudy  and  cumbrous  gold  clock, 
which  had  been  one  of  the  emperor's  gifts  to  Betty; 
tapestry  and  pictures  that  had  once  belonged  to  the 
Empress  Josephine;  dining-room  furniture  that  had 
graced  the  salle  a  manger  of  King  Charles  X.  of  France; 
a  massive,  glittering  chandelier,  the  gift  of  General 
Moreau,  who  had  vied  with  the  emperor  for  Betty's 
smiles. 

Above  all  these  and  the  rest  of  her  home's  rich  fur- 
nishings, Betty  treasured  two  other  gifts  from  Napoleon 
— odd  gages  d'amour  for  such  a  man  to  have  given 
such  a  woman.  They  were  the  battered  army  chest 
and  army  cot  used  by  him  throughout  the  wonderful 
Italian  campaign  that  had  first  established  his  fame. 

The  world  was  scoured  by  Jumel's  merchant  ships 
to  secure  rare  plants  and  trees  for  the  hundred-and- 
fifty-acre  park  surrounding  the  mansion.  Cedars  from 
Mount  Lebanon,  cypresses  from  Greece,  exotic  flowers 
from  South  America,  roses  from  Provence — these  were 
but  a  few  of  the  innumerable  exotics  that  filled  the 
grounds.  (The  "park,"  to-day,  is  a  wilderness  of 
dingy,  apartment-lined  streets). 

Once  established  in  their  new  home,  the  Jumels 
began  to  entertain  on  a  scale  that  dwarfed  even  the 
much-vaunted  hospitality  of  the  ante-bellum  South. 
And  the  people  -who,  of  yore,  had  looked  obliquely 
and  frostily  on  Betty  Bowen,  now  clamored  and 
schemed  and  besought  for  invitations  to  her  dinners. 


MADAME     JUMEL  101 

Well  they  might;  for  not  only  America's  great  folk 
delighted  to  honor  the  mansion  by  their  presence,  but 
every  titled  foreigner  who  touched  our  shores  became 
a  guest  there. 

Hither  came  Joseph  Bonaparte — kicked  off  the 
ready-made  throne  to  which  his  emperor  brother  had 
vainly  sought  to  fit  the  incompetent  meager  form  and 
more  meager  intellect — and  here  he  was  entertained 
with  royal  honor,  as  if  he  had  been  still  a  sovereign 
instead  of  merely  a  crownless  puppet  no  longer  upheld 
by  the  mightiest  of  human  hands.  Here  he  was  "Your 
Majesty,"  and  people  backed  out  of  the  room  in  which 
he  chanced  to  be,  stood  until  he  gave  them  gracious 
leave  to  sit,  and  otherwise  showered  upon  him  the 
adoring  servility  that  the  freeborn  are  prone  to  lavish 
upon  the  representatives  of  monarchy. 

Bonaparte  after  Bonaparte  visited  the  Jumels.  The 
name,  "Bonaparte,"  was  still  one  wherewith  to  conjure, 
and  that  fact  by  itself  made  its  thick-headed  and  im- 
pecunious bearers  welcome  in  almost  every  land  they 
might  choose  to  visit.  They  graciously  accepted  the 
Jumel  house's  hospitality  and  the  veneration  of  their 
fellow  guests;  still  more  graciously  they  borrowed 
money — which  they  never  returned — of  Papa  Jumel; 
and  most  graciously  of  all  they  made  ardent  and  heavy 
love  to  Betty. 

To  the  Jumel  mansion  came  finally  the  last  and  least 
esteemed  of  the  Bonaparte  visitor;  a  squat,  puffy- 
eyed  princeling — pallid,  crafty  shadow  of  the  Auster- 


102  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

litz  Man — who  had  left  France  and  jail  one  jump 
ahead  of  the  police,  had  served  as  special  constable 
in  London  to  pick  up  enough  money  for  food,  and 
now  for  similar  reason  was  teaching  school  in  Borden- 
town,  New  Jersey. 

He  was  Louis  Napoleon,  alleged  nephew  of  Napo- 
leon I.  I  say  "alleged"  on  the  authority  of  Victor 
Hugo's  famous  sneer  that  Louis  was  "neither  the 
nephew  of  his  uncle,  the  son  of  his  father,  nor  the 
father  of  his  son."  It  was  Hugo,  too,  who,  when  Louis 
became  emperor  of  the  French,  under  the  title  of 
Napoleon  HI.,  dubbed  him  "Napoleon  the  Little." 
For  which  witticism,  Monsieur  Hugo  was  promptly 
banished  from  France. 

Louis  was  the  son  of  Napoleon's  younger  brother 
of  the  same  name  and  of  his  wife— and  step-niece — 
Hortense  Beauharnais.  The  son  had  not  a  single  Bon- 
apartist  feature  nor  trait.  He  strongly  resembled, 
however,  a  certain  dashing  Dutch  admiral,  one  Flahaut, 
on  whom  Hortense  had  been  credited  with  bestowing 
a  more  than  neighborly  interest.  It  is  not  libelous,  in 
view  of  many  proven  facts — indeed,  it  is  scarce  gossip 
— to  say  that  Hortense,  like  her  mother,  the  Empress 
Josephine,  had  had  the  foible  of  loving  not  wisely,  but 
too  often. 

In  any  event,  whoever  may  have  been  his  father, 
Louis  Napoleon  was  kindly  received  by  the  Jumels; 
not  as  a  prince,  but  as  a  guest  of  honor.  And  Papa 
Jumel  lent  him  much  hard-earned  American  money. 


MADAME     JUMEL  103 

Among  all  the  Bonapartes,  Louis  was  the  least  promis- 
ing of  the  Jumels'  beneficiaries.  And  of  them  all, 
he  alone  was  to  make  any  return  for  their  goodness  to 
him. 

The  Prince  de  Joinville — here  to  investigate,  and  if 
necessary  buy  off,  Eleazer  Williams*  claim  to  be  the 
"lost  Dauphin" — stayed  at  the  mansion  and  paid 
charming  attentions  to  Betty.  So  did  the  polished  old 
scoundrel,  Talleyrand,  whom  Napoleon  had  daintily 
described  as  "a  silk  stocking  filled  with  muck." 

Less  lofty  of  birth,  but  worth  all  the  Bonapartes  put 
together  in  point  of  genius,  was  a  young  American 
poet  who  vastly  admired  Betty,  and  who,  on  her  in- 
vitation, spent  weeks  at  a  time  at  the  mansion.  He  was 
Fitz-Greene  Halleck;  and,  seated  on  the  porch  of  the 
Jumel  house,  he  wrote  a  poem  that  a  million  school- 
boys were  soon  to  spout — "Marco  Bozzaris." 

One  morning  in  1830,  Papa  Jumel  set  out  for  New 
York  on  a  business  call  to  his  bankers.  He  rode  forth 
from  the  long,  winding  driveway — several  flat  houses 
and  stores  and  streets  cut  across  that  driveway's  course 
to-day — in  the  lumbering  and  costly  family  coach. 

An  hour  later  he  was  brought  home  dying.  The 
coach  had  upset  on  the  frost-rutted  road  a  few  miles 
to  the  south.  Jumel  had  fallen  out — on  his  head. 

Papa  Jumel  was  in  the  late  seventies  at  the  time  of 
his  death.  His  widow  was  either  fifty-three  or  sixty- 
one — all  depending  on  whether  you  believe  her  own 
statement  or  the  homely  Rhode  Island  facts.  What 


104  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

does  it  matter?  She  was  one  of  the  super-women  who 
do  not  grow  old. 

Scarce  was  her  worthy  spouse  stretched  comfortably 
in  his  last  sleep,  when  suitors  thronged  the  house.  And 
it  was  not  alone  because  the  Widow  Jumel  was  one 
of  the  richest  women  in  America.  She  still  held  her 
ancient  sway  over  men's  hearts;  still  made  sentimental 
mush  of  men's  brains. 

Gossip,  silenced  of  late  years,  sprang  eagerly  and 
happily  to  life.  Once  more  did  New  York  ring  with 
Betty's  daring  flirtations.  But  she  cared  little  for 
people's  talk.  She  was  rich  enough,  famous  enough, 
clever  enough,  still  beautiful  enough  to  be  a  law  unto 
herself.  The  very  folk  who  gossiped  so  scandalously 
about  her  were  most  eager  to  catch  her  eye  in  public 
or  to  secure  an  invitation  to  the  great  mansion  on  the 
Harlem. 

As  to  men,  she  had  never  yet  in  all  her  fifty-three — 
or  was  it  sixty-one? — years,  met  her  match  at  heart 
smashing.  But  she  was  to  meet  him.  And  soon. 

Will  you  let  me  go  back  for  a  space  and  sketch,  in 
a  mere  mouthful  of  words,  the  haps  and  mishaps  of 
one  of  Betty's  earlier  admirers? 

Aaron  Burr  was  vice  president  of  the  United  States 
when  he  shot  Hamilton.  The  bullet  that  killed  Ham- 
ilton rebounded  and  killed  Burr's  political  future;  for 
Hamilton  was  a  national  favorite  and  Burr  was  not. 

Burr  served  out  his  term  as  vice  president  amid  a 
whirlwind  of  national  hatred.  Then  he  went  West,  a 


MADAME    JUMEL  105 

bitterly  disappointed  and  vengeful  man,  and  embarked 
on  an  incredibly  audacious  scheme  whereby  he  was  to 
wrench  free  the  great  West  and  Southwest  from  the 
rest  of  the  Union  and  install  himself  as  emperor  of 
that  vast  region,  under  the  title  of  "Aaron  I." 

The  scheme  failed,  and  Burr  was  hauled  before  the 
bar  of  justice  on  charges  of  high  treason.  Through 
some  lucky  fate  or  other,  he  was  acquitted,  but  he  was 
secretly  advised  to  leave  America.  He  followed  the 
advice.  And  when  he  wanted  to  come  back  to  the 
United  States,  he  found  every  port  closed  against 
him.  So  he  starved  for  a  time  in  obscure  European 
lodging. 

His  heart  had  been  broken,  years  earlier,  by  the 
death  of  the  only  woman  he  ever  truly  loved.  She 
was  not  one  of  the  hundreds  who  made  fools  of  them- 
selves over  him.  She  was  not  his  wife,  who  had  died 
so  long  before.  She  was  his  only  daughter,  Theodosia ; 
the  only  holy  influence  in  his  tempestuous  life. 

And  Theodosia  had  been  lost  at  sea.  No  authentic 
word  of  her,  or  of  the  ship  that  carried  her,  has  ever 
been  received.  Burr  had  spent  every  day  for  months 
pacing  the  Battery  sea  wall,  straining  those  uncanny 
black  eyes  of  his  for  glimpses  of  her  ship.  He  had 
spent  every  dollar  he  could  lay  hands  on  in  sending 
for  news  of  her.  And  then  he  had  given  up  hope. 
This  had  been  long  before. 

His  daughter  dead,  his  political  hopes  blasted,  his 
country's  gates  barred  against  him,  he  dragged  out  a 


106  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

miserable  life  in  Europe.  Then,  after  years  of  absence, 
he  slipped  into  the  United  States  in  disguise. 

The  first  news  of  his  return  came  in  a  New  York 
newspaper  announcement  that  "Colonel  Aaron  Burr 
has  opened  law  offices  on  the  second  floor  of  23  Nassau 
Street."  The  government  made  no  move  to  deport 
him.  Clients  by  the  dozen  flocked  to  take  advantage 
of  his  brilliant  legal  intellect.  Poverty,  in  a  breath, 
gave  place  to  prosperity. 

This  was  in  the  spring  of  1833,  a  scant  three  years 
after  Papa  Jumel's  sudden  demise.  Tidings  came  to 
Betty  that  her  old  adorer,  after  so  long  a  lapse  of  time, 
was  back  in  New  York.  And  across  the  gap  of  years 
came  memories  of  his  mesmeric  eyes,  his  wonderful 
voice — the  eyes  and  voice  no  woman  could  resist — the 
inspired  manner  of  his  love-making.  And  Betty  went 
to  him. 

Throughout  his  love-starred  life  it  was  Burr's  solemn 
declaration  that  never  once  did  he  take  a  single  step 
out  of  his  path  to  win  any  woman ;  that  all  his  myriad 
conquests  came  to  him  unsought.  Probably  this  was 
true.  There  are  worse  ways  of  bagging  any  form  of 
game  than  by  "still  hunting."  Perhaps  there  are  few 
better. 

At  all  events,  down  Broadway  in  her  France-built 
coach  rolled  Betty  Jumel — tall,  blond,  statuesque  as 
in  the  Betty  Bowen  days  when  Peter  Croix  had  "bought 
a  book  for  his  friends  to  read."  She  called  on  Burr, 
ostensibly  to  consult  him  about  a  legal  matter  involving 


MADAME    JUMEL  107 

a   real-estate   deal.      But   Burr  understood.      Burr   al- 
ways understood. 

He  saw,  too,  that  Betty  was  still  fair  to  look  upon 
and  that  she  had  lost  little  of  her  charm.  By  common 
report  he  knew  she  was  egregiously  rich.  He  himself 
•was  wizened,  white  of  hair,  and  seventy-eight  years 
old.  Poverty,  griefs,  bitter  disappointments  had  sadly 
broken  him.  Save  for  his  eyes  and  voice  and  brain, 
there  was  little  about  him  to  remind  Betty  of  the  all- 
conquering  and  dapper  little  Lothario  of  forty  years 
back.  Yet,  as  he  listened  and  looked,  she  loved  him. 
Yes,  there  is  a  goodly  assortment  of  hornets*  nests 
wherein  a  fool  may  run  his  head  without  visiting  the 
same  nest  twice. 

A  few  days  after  her  call  at  his  office,  Betty  gave 
one  of  her  renowned  dinner  parties.  It  was  "in  honor 
of  Colonel  Burr."  The  guest  of  honor  carried  all  be- 
fore him  that  evening.  The  people  who  had  come  to 
stare  at  him  as  an  escaped  arch-criminal  went  home 
•wholly  enslaved  by  his  magnetic  charm.  Aaron  Burr 
had  come  to  his  own  again. 

In  saying  good  night  to  his  hostess,  Burr  lingered 
after  the  other  guests  had  trundled  off  cityward  in  their 
carriages.  Then,  taking  his  leave  with  bared  head, 
there  in  the  moonlight  on  the  steps  of  the  Jumel  man- 
sion, he  dropped  lightly  to  one  knee  and  raised  Betty's 
hand  to  his  lips. 

"Madam,"  he  breathed,  the  merciful  moonlight 
making  him  for  the  moment  his  young  and  irresistible 


108  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

self  again,  "madam,  I  give  you  my  hand.  My  Heart 
has  long  been  yours." 

It  was  a  pretty,  old-world  speech.  Betty  thought — 
or  affected  to  think — it  meant  nothing.  But  it 
was  the  opening  gun  of  a  swift  campaign.  Day 
after  day  thereafter,  Burr  neglected  his  fast-grow- 
ing law  business  to  drive  out  to  the  house  above 
the  river.  Every  day  he  drew  the  siege  lines  closer  to 
the  citadel. 

At  length  he  asked  Betty  to  marry  him.  With  a 
final  glimmer  of  common  sense,  she  refused.  He  went 
away.  Betty  feared  he  would  not  come  back.  But 
he  did.  He  came  back  the  very  next  day — July  1, 
1833.  And  with  him  in  the  carriage  was  another  old 
man — the  Reverend  Doctor  Bogart,  who  had  per- 
formed the  marriage  ceremony  for  Burr  and  the  latter's 
first  wife. 

To  the  butler  who  admitted  them,  Burr  gave  a  curt 
message  for  Madame  Jumel,  asking  that  she  come 
down  to  them  at  once  in  the  drawing-room.  Wonder- 
ing, she  obeyed. 

*'Madam,"  said  Burr,  by  way  of  salutation,  "I  have 
come  here  to-day  to  marry  you.  Pray  get  ready  at 
once!" 

Betty  indignantly  refused,  and  all  but  ordered  her 
suitor  and  the  clergyman  from  the  house.  Then  Burr 
began  to  talk.  The  consummate  eloquence  that  had 
swayed  prejudiced  juries  to  his  will,  the  love  pleas  that 
no  woman  had  been  able  to  hear  unmoved,  the  match- 


MADAME    JUMEL  109 

less  skill  at  argument  that  had  made  him  master  of  men 
and  women  alike — all  were  brought  into  play. 

An  aged,  discredited,  half-impoverished  failure  was 
asking  a  beautiful  and  enormously  rich  woman  to  be 
his  wife.  Those  were  the  cold  facts.  But  cold  facts 
had  a  way  of  vanishing  before  Aaron  Burr's  person- 
ality. Perhaps  the  greatest  lingual  triumph  of  his 
seventy-eight  years  was  won  when  this  feeble  old  man 
broke  down  within  half  an  hour  all  Betty's  defenses  of 
coquetry  and  of  sanity  as  well. 

At  last  she  ran  from  the  room,  murmuring  that  she 
would  "decide  and  let  him  know."  Burr  sank  back 
wearily  in  his  chair.  The  victory  was  won.  He  knew 
it. 

A  little  later  Betty  reappeared  at  the  head  of  the 
stairs.  She  was  resplendent  in  a  gown  of  thick,  stiff, 
dove-colored  satin,  and  she  glittered  with  a  thousand 
jewels.  Burr,  lightly  as  a  boy,  ran  up  the  stairs  to  meet 
her.  Without  a  word  she  took  his  proffered  arm.  To- 
gether they  walked  to  where  the  clergyman,  stationed 
by  Burr,  awaited  them.  And  they  -were  married — 
super-woman  and  super-man.  I  know  of  no  other 
instance  in  the  History  of  Love  where  two  such  con- 
summate heart  breakers  became  man  and  wife. 

It  would  be  pleasant  to  record  that  the  magnetic 
old  couple  walked  hand  and  hand  into  the  sunset;  that 
their  last  years  were  spent  together  in  the  light  of  the 
afterglow.  Here  was  a  husband  after  Betty's  own 
heart.  Here  was  a  wife  to  excite  the  envy  of  all  Burr's 


110  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN" 

friends,  to  rehabilitate  him  socially  and  financially.  It 
seemed  an  ideal  union. 

But  the  new-wed  pair  did  none  of  the  things  that 
any  optimist  would  predict,  that  any  astute  student 
of  human  nature  would  set  down  in  a  novel  about 
them.  Before  the  honeymoon  was  over,  they  were 
quarreling  like  cat  and  dog.  About  money,  of  course. 
Burr  sold  some  stock  for  his  wife,  and  neglected  to  turn 
over  the  proceeds  to  her.  She  asked  for  the  money. 
He  curtly  replied: 

"Madam,  this  time  you  are  married  to  a  man.  A 
man  who  will  henceforth  take  charge  of  all  your  busi- 
ness affairs." 

Betty's  temper  had  never,  at  best,  threatened  to 
rob  the  patient  Griselda  of  her  laurels.  Men  had  been 
her  slaves,  not  her  masters.  She  had  no  fancy  for 
changing  the  lifelong  conditions.  So,  in  a  blaze  of 
anger,  she  not  only  demanded  her  money,  but  hinted 
very  strongly  that  Colonel  Burr  was  little  better  than 
a  common  fortune  hunter. 

Burr  ordered  her  to  go  to  her  room  and  stay  there 
until  she  could  remember  the  respect  due  from  a  wife 
to  her  husband.  She  made  a  hot  retort  to  the  effect 
that  the  house  was  hers,  and  that,  but  for  her  wealth, 
Burr  was  a  mere  outcast  and  beggar. 

Burr,  without  a  word,  turned  and  left  the  house. 
This  was  just  ten  days  after  the  wedding.  He  went 
to  New  York  and  took  up  his  abode  in  his  former 
Duane  Street  lodgings.  Betty,  scared  and  penitent, 


MADAME    JUMEL  111 

went  after  him.  There  was  a  reconciliation,  and  he 
came  back. 

But  soon  there  was  another  squabble  about  money. 
And  Betty,  in  another  tantrum,  went  to  a  lawyer  and 
brought  suit  to  take  the  control  of  her  fortune  out  of 
her  husband's  hands.  Again  Burr  left  his  new  home, 
vowing  he  would  never  return. 

The  poor  old  fellow,  once  more  cast  upon  his  own 
resources,  and  self-deprived  of  the  luxuries  his  wife's 
money  had  brought  him,  fell  ill.  When  Betty,  in 
another  contrite  fit,  went  to  plead  with  him  to  come 
back,  she  found  him  delirious.  She  had  him  carried 
out  to  the  mansion,  and  for  weeks  nursed  him  right 
tenderly. 

But  when  he  came  again  to  his  senses,  Burr  would 
not  speak  to  his  wife.  The  moment  he  was  able  to  get 
out  of  bed,  he  left  the  house.  Betty  never  saw  him 
again.  Not  very  long  afterward  he  died,  in  a  Staten 
Island  hotel — alone,  unmourned,  he  who  had  been  the 
darling  of  women. 

Did  Betty  mourn  her  husband  emeritus?  Not  no- 
ticeably. She  was  not  of  the  type  that  mourns.  Be- 
fore Burr  was  fairly  under  the  sod,  she  was  flirting 
gayly  and  was  demanding  and  receiving  the  same  ad- 
miration that  had  always  been  hers.  She  sought  to 
make  people  forget  that  she  had  ever  been  Mrs.  Burr, 
and  she  asked  them  to  call  her,  once  more,  "Madame 
Jumel."  She  dazzled  New  York  with  a  mammoth 
flower  fete  in  the  summer  of  1837;  and  once  more. 


112  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

heedless  of  people's  opinions,  ruled  as  queen  of  New 
York's  little  social  realm. 

And  so  the  years  sped  on,  until  the  super-woman 
of  other  days  could  no  longer  fight  off  that  Incurable 
disease,  old  age.  American  men  no  longer  vied  for 
her  favors.  She  decided  that  American  men's  taste 
for  beauty  had  been  swallowed  up  by  commercialism. 
And  she  went  again  to  Paris,  where,  she  remembered, 
men  had  never  ceased  to  sue  for  her  love. 

This  was  in  1853.  Louis  Napoleon  had  just  made 
himself  "Napoleon  III.,  Emperor  of  the  French."  He 
had  a  way,  in  the  days  of  his  power,  of  forgetting  those 
who  had  befriended  him  when  he  was  down-at-the-heel 
exile,  and  of  snubbing  former  friends  -who  -were  so 
foolish  as  to  claim  present  notice  on  the  ground  of  past 
favors. 

But  he  made  a  notable  exception  in  the  case  of 
Madame  Jumel.  He  received  her  with  open  arms,  gave 
a  court  ball  in  honor  of  her  return  to  Paris,  and  in 
every  way  treated  her  almost  as  if  she  had  been  a  visit- 
ing sovereign.  One  likes  to  think  his  overworked  re- 
cording angel  put  all  this  down  in  large  letters  on  the 
credit  side  of  Napoleon  the  Little's  celestial  ledger 
page.  Heaven  knows  there  was  plenty  of  blank  space 
on  that  side  of  the  page  for  any  such  entries. 

But  on  Betty  herself  the  effect  of  all  this  adoration 
was  decidedly  startling.  Treated  like  a  queen,  she 
grew  to  believe  she  was  a  queen.  The  razor-keen  wits 
that  had  stood  by  her  so  gallantly  for  three-quarters 


MADAME    JUMEL  113 

of  a  century  or  more  were  dulling.  Her  mind  began 
wandering  helplessly  in  the  realms  of  fancy.  An  odd 
phase  of  her  mental  decay  was  that  she  took  to 
babbling  incessantly  of  Aaron  Burr — whose  name  she 
had  not  spoken  in  years — and  she  seemed  to  forget  that 
she  had  ever  met  a  man  named  Jumel. 

She  came  back  to  the  old  house  on  the  hill,  over- 
looking the  Harlem.  The  stream  was  no  longer  as 
pastoral  and  deserted  as  in  earlier  days,  and  houses 
and  cottages  had  begun  to  spring  up  all  around  the 
confines  of  the  mansion's  grounds.  New  York  was 
slowly  creeping  northward. 

But  it  is  to  be  doubted  that  Betty  realized  the 
change.  She  was  a  queen;  no  less  a  queen  because 
she  ruled  an  imaginary  kingdom. 

She  declared  that  her  position  as  a  sovereign  de- 
manded a  body  of  household  troops.  So  she  hired  a 
bodyguard  of  twenty  soldiers,  dressed  them  in  gay 
uniforms,  and  placed  them  on  duty  around  the  house. 
She  increased  her  staff  of  servants  to  an  amazing  de- 
gree. She  assumed  regal  airs.  Every  visitor  was 
announced  as  if  entering  the  presence  of  royalty.  Betty 
no  longer  "received  callers."  Instead,  she  "held 
audiences."  Yearly  she  journeyed  in  state  to  Sara- 
toga, with  a  retinue  of  fifty  servants  and  "officers  of 
the  household." 

Money  went  like  water  in  the  upkeep  of  the  queenly 
establishment.  The  once-boundless  Jumel  wealth  that 
she  had  helped  to  amass  began  to  shrink  under  the 


114  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

strain.  Yet  so  great  was  that  fortune  that  more  than 
a  million  dollars  of  it  was  left  after  she  died. 

New  York  was  kind.  Men  who  had  loved  Betty, 
women  who  had  been  envied  because  of  her  friendship 
for  them,  rallied  about  her  now,  in  her  dotage,  and 
helped  her  keep  up  the  pitiable  farce  of  queenship. 

And  in  the  mansion  on  the  hill,  on  July  16,  1865, 
she  fell  asleep.  A  score  of  New  York's  foremost  men 
were  her  honorary  pallbearers.  And  all  society  made, 
for  the  last  time,  the  long  journey  to  Harlem  to  honor 
her  memory. 

So  died  Betty  Bowen — Betty  Jumel — Betty  Burr — 
whatever  you  prefer  to  call  her.  She  was  New  York's 
first  and  greatest  official  heart  breaker.  She  was 
doubly  fortunate,  too,  in  missing  the  average  old-super- 
woman's  realization  of  having  outgrown  her  wonder- 
charm.  For  when  her  life  book  of  beauty  and  power 
and  magnetism  closed,  Delusion  tenderly  took  up  the 
tale.  And  through  a  fairyland  of  imagined  admiration 
and  regal  rank,  Betty  tottered  happily  to  the  very  end. 


CHAPTER  SIX 


THE  "ACTRESS  HEART  QUEEN" 

SHE   was  an   exlaundress,    and   the   daughter   of   a 
hatter. 

He  was  an  ideal  dime-novel  hero,  and  the 
son  of  a  king.  She  was  all  spirit.  He  was  all  body. 
And  their  love  story  is,  perhaps,  the  strangest  of  its 
sort  in  the  sad  annals  of  hearts. 

(Their  great-great-granddaughter,  by  the  way,  was 
George  Sand — a  four-generation  throwback  of  the 
nameless  super-woman  trait.) 

Having  thus  rhapsodied  with  the  hope  of  catching 
the  reader's  attention,  one  may  ring  up  the  curtain 
on  a  romance  whose  compelling  interest  cannot  be 
spoiled  by  the  most  bungling  writing. 

She  was  Adrienne  Lecouvreur;  and  like  the  bulk 
of  history's  super-women,  she  sprang  from  the  masses. 
Her  childhood  was  spent  in  beating  against  the  bars 
behind  which  her  eagle  spirit  was  locked.  At  fourteen 
she  joined  a  road  company;  and  within  a  few  years 


116  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

she  was  acclaimed  as  the  greatest  actress  the  world 
had  thus  far  know. 

As  a  comedienne  she  was  a  failure.  It  was  in  tragedy 
that  she  soared  to  untouched  heights.  And  her  life, 
from  cradle  to  unmarked  grave,  was  one  long,  sus- 
tained tragedy  of  love.  Or,  rather,  of  loves.  For  she 
had  divers  harsh  experiences  before  the  last  great 
love  flashed  upon  her. 

It  was  at  Lille,  while  she  was  still  in  her  apprentice- 
ship as  an  actress,  that  Adrienne  met  a  young  baron; 
a  captain  in  the  local  garrison.  He  loved  her,  and  he 
was  her  first  love.  It  was  not  the  custom  of  the  early 
eighteenth  century  for  a  French  noble  to  propose 
marriage  to  a  former  laundress  who  was  playing  utility 
parts  in  a  third-rate  road  show.  Probably  there  was  no 
precedent  for  it.  And  such  a  proposal  would  have 
been  a  waste  of  windy  words,  at  best.  For  neither 
the  king  nor  the  man's  parents  would  have  allowed 
it  to  lead  to  marriage. 

Yet — or  perhaps  because  of  it — the  baron  asked 
Adrienne  Lecouvreur  to  be  his  wife.  She  was  in  the 
seventh  paradise  of  first  love.  It  was  all  turning  out 
the  way  it  did  in  plays.  And  plays  were,  thus 
far,  Adrienne*  s  chief  guidebook  of  life.  So  the 
prettily  staged  engagement  began;  with  roseate  light 
effects. 

Before  Adrienne  had  time  for  disillusionment,  the 
baron  died.  In  the  first  grief — she  was  at  an  age  when 
every  tragedy  is  absolutely  permanent  and  irrevocable 


ADRIENNE    LECOUVREUR  117 

— the  luckless  girl  tried  to  kill  herself.  Her  kindly 
fellow  actors  took  turns  in  watching  her  and  in  ab- 
stracting unobtrusively  any  lethal  weapons  that  might 
chance  to  be  within  her  reach.  And  at  last  Youth  came 
to  the  rescue;  permanent  heartbreak  being  too  mighty 
a  feat  for  sixteen. 

Adrienne  fell  to  referring  to  the  baron's  death  as 
her  life  tragedy,  not  yet  realizing  that  the  affair  was 
but  an  insignificant  curtain  raiser. 

By  and  by  another  nobleman  crossed  her  horizon. 
He  was  Philippe  le  Ray.  And  for  the  moment  he 
fascinated  Adrienne.  Once  more  there  was  a  hope — 
or  she  thought  there  was — of  a  marriage  into  the 
aristocracy.  Then,  just  as  everything  seemed  to  be 
along  smoothly,  she  threw  away  her  possible  chances 
with  both  hands. 

Into  the  road  company  came  a  new  recruit,  Clavel 
by  name.  You  will  not  find  him  in  the  shining  records 
of  the  French  stage,  nor  under  the  "Cs"  in  any  encyclo- 
pedia. His  name  has  been  picked  in  history's 
museum  solely  from  the  fact  that  he  jilted  Adrienne 
Lecouvreur. 

Philippe  le  Ray  was  promptly  shelved  for  the  new 
love.  And  with  him  Adrienne  sacrificed  all  her  sup- 
posed chances  of  wealth,  rank,  and  ease;  for  the  sake 
of  a  penniless  actor,  and  for  love. 

She  became  engaged  to  Clavel.  They  planned  to 
marry  as  soon  as  their  joint  earnings  would  permit, 
and  to  tour  France  as  co-stars.  Or,  if  the  public  pre- 


118  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN* 

ferred,  with  Clavel  as  star,  and  with  Adrienne  as  an 
adoringly  humble  member  of  the  cast. 

Early  in  the  affair,  Clavel  found  a  better-paying 
position  in  another  company.  Adrienne  urged  him 
to  accept  it,  for  the  temporary  parting  promised  to 
bring  nearer  the  day  of  their  marriage.  And  Clavel, 
to  please  her,  took  the  offer. 

So,  again,  Adrienne  found  herself  alone.  But  it  was 
a  loneliness  that  vibrated  with  hope.  It  was  at  this 
time  that  she  chose  for  herself  a  motto,  which  there- 
after emblazoned  her  letters  and  lingerie. 

It  was,  "Que  Faire  Au  Monde  Sans '  Aimer  ?" 
("What  is  living  without  loving?")  She  was  soon  to 
learn  the  grim  answer  to  the  challenge-query  she  so 
gayly  hurled  at  fate. 

Clavel's  letters  grew  few.  They  waned  in  warmth. 
Odd  rumors  with  which  the  theater  world  has  ever 
been  rife  began  to  reach  Adrienne.  And  at  last  she 
wrote  her  absent  lover  a  missive  that  has  been  num- 
bered by  cognoscenti  among  the  great  love  letters 
of  the  ages.  Here  it  is,  in  part — a  halting  translation: 

I  scarce  know  what  to  believe,  from  your  neglect.  But 
be  certain  always  that  I  love  you  for  yourself  a  hundred  times 
more  dearly  than  on  my  own  account.  Oh,  love  me,  dear,  as 
I  shall  forever  love  you!  That  is  all  I  ask  from  life. 

But  don't  promise  to,  unless  you  can  keep  your  word. 
Your  welfare  is  far  more  precious  to  me  than  my  own.  So 
always  follow  the  course  that  seems  most  pleasant  to  you.  If 
ever  I  lose  you  and  you  are  still  happy,  I  shall  have  the  joy 
of  knowing  1  have  not  been  a  bar  to  your  happiness. 


ADRIENNE    LECOUVREUR  119 

The  worthy  Clavel  took  Adrienne  at  her  word.  He 
proceeded  to  "follow  the  course  that  seemed  most 
pleasant  to  him" — by  breaking  the  engagement  and 
marrying  a  lesser  woman  who  had  a  dot  of  several 
thousand  francs.  He  explained  his  action  by  saying 
that  he  must  look  out  for  his  own  future,  and  that 
Adrienne  had  no  prospects  of  success  on  the  stage. 

And  thus  the  thrifty  actor  passes  out  of  history. 
Thus,  too,  he  lost  a  future  chance  to  handle  the  funds 
of  Europe's  richest  actress,  and  of  starring  as  her 
husband.  Peace  to  his  puny  soull 

Adrienne  Lecouvreur  no  longer  clamored  to  die. 
She  was  older  now — nearly  twenty.  And  the  latest 
blow  hardened  instead  of  crushing  her.  By  this  time 
the  girlish  chrysalis  had  been  shed  and  a  gloriously 
beautiful  woman  had  emerged.  Already  she  was 
hailed  as  the  "Actress  Heart  Queen."  Men  were  strain- 
ing the  vocabulary  of  imbecility  to  coin  phrases  for  her. 

And  for  the  first  and  last  time  in  her  career, 
Adrienne  resolved  to  capitalize  her  charms.  It  was  the 
one  adventuress-moment  in  all  her  story.  And  the 
Hand  that  ever  guided  her  course  picked  her  up  and 
set  her  back,  very  hard  and  very  promptly,  in  the 
destined  path  of  tragedy  from  which  she  had  tried  to 
stray. 

Stinging  and  heart-dead  from  Clavel's  desertion,  she 
listened  to  the  vows  of  the  Comte  de  Klinglin.  He  was 
rich;  he  was  a  soldier  of  note;  and  Adrienne  was  no 
longer  the  world-innocent  child  of  her  first  engagement 


120  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

days.  She  played  her  cards  with  the  skill  of  a  perfect 
actress.  From  mere  flirtation,  the  count  advanced  to 
the  point  of  worshiping  her. 

De  Klinglin  besought  her  to  marry  him.  And  with 
seeming  reluctance,  she  yielded.  She  even  pointed  out 
a  way  by  which  they  might  evade  royal  and  family 
law  by  emigrating  for  a  time  to  some  other  country, 
and  then,  by  judicious  bribery,  arranging  a  return  and 
a  reinstatement.  De  Klinglin  entered  eagerly  into  the 
plan. 

Then,  on  the  very  eve  of  their  proposed  wedding, 
the  count  deserted  her  and  married  an  heiress.  De- 
cidedly, the  Hand  was  guiding  Adrienne  against  every 
effort  or  desire  of  her  own. 

This  latest  blow  to  pride  and  to  new-born  ambition 
was  the  turning  point  in  Adrienne  Lecouvreur's  road. 
It  changed  her  from  a  professional  beauty  into  an  in- 
spired actress. 

She  threw  herself  into  her  work  with  a  tragic 
intensity  bred  of  her  own  sorrows.  She  turned  hei 
back  on  social  distractions,  and  on  everything  that 
came  between  her  and  success.  Her  acting  as  well  as 
her  beauty  became  the  talk  of  the  provinces.  Word 
of  her  prowess  drifted  to  Paris,  the  Mecca  of 
eighteenth-century  actor-folk.  A  Paris  manager  came 
to  see  her  act,  and  he  at  orce  engaged  her. 

In  1717,  when  she  was  twenty-three,  she  burst  un- 
heralded upon  the  French  metropolis.  In  a  night,  Paris 
was  at  her  feet.  Almost  at  once,  she  was  made  a  lead- 


ADRIENNE    LECOUVREUR  121 

ing  woman  of  the  Comedie  Francaise;  where,  for 
thirteen  years,  she  reigned,  undisputed  sovereign  of 
the  French  stage. 

Never  before  had  such  acting  been  witnessed  or 
even  imagined.  It  was  a  revelation.  Up  to  this  time 
French  actors  had  mouthed  their  words  noisily  and 
grandiloquently,  reciting  the  Alexandrine  or  otherwise 
metrical  lines — wherein  practically  all  the  classic  plays 
of  the  period,  except  some  of  Moliere's,  were  written — 
in  a  singsong  chant  that  played  sad  havoc  with  the 
sense. 

Incidentally,  the  costuming — as  you  may  see  from 
contemporary  cuts — was  a  nightmare.  And  when  a 
character  on  the  stage  was  not  declaiming  or  dramati- 
cally listening,  he  usually  stood  stock-still  in  a  statu- 
esque attitude,  staring  into  blank  space,  with  the  look 
of  an  automaton. 

All  this  seems  ridiculous  to  us;  but  it  had  come 
straight  down  as  an  almost  inviolable  "classic  tradi- 
tion" from  the  ancient  Greek  drama,  which  had  been 
more  a  series  of  declamations  than  a  vital  play. 

Yes,  Adrienne  Lecouvreur  was  a  revelation  to  Paris. 
On  the  stage  her  voice  was  as  soft  and  musical  as  it 
was  penetrating.  Instead  of  intoning  a  pompous  mono- 
logue, she  spoke  her  lines  as  people  in  real  life  spoke. 
Her  emotions  were  keenly  human.  Every  syllable  and 
every  shade  of  voice  meant  something. 

Without  sacrificing  the  poetry  of  the  rhymed  coup- 
lets, she  put  the  breath  of  life  and  of  conversational 


122  STORIES     OF     THE     SUPER-WOMEN 

meaning  into  them.  She  dressed  the  characters  she 
played  in  the  way  such  persons  might  reasonably  have 
been  supposed  to  dress.  She  made  them  a  joy  to  the 
eye  instead  of  an  insult  to  the  intelligence.  And  when 
she  was  not  speaking,  she  was  forever  acting;  intro- 
ducing a  million  bits  of  byplay  to  replace  the  old 
statuesque  poses. 

She  had  lived.  And  she  put  the  breath  of  that  life 
into  her  work.  This  seems  simple  enough  to  us  in 
these  days  of  stage  realism.  But  it  was  a  wonder- 
breeding  novelty  to  France.  Adrienne  revolutionized 
acting,  diction,  and  costuming.  Paris  acclaimed  her 
as  a  genius;  which  abused  term  was  for  once  well 
applied. 

Men  of  rank  clamored  for  introductions  to  her. 
They  plotted,  and  sighed,  and  bribed,  and  killed  one 
another  for  her  favor.  But  for  them  all  she  had  one 
stereotyped  answer;  an  answer  that  waxed  historic 
through  many  firm  repetitions: 

"Love  is  a  folly  which  I  detest  1" 

Which,  in  conjunction  with  her  motto,  "What  is 
living  without  loving?"  throws  a  sidelight  on  Adri- 
enne's  ideas  of  life  at  the  moment. 

Not  only  did  she  revolutionize  the  stage,  but  she 
was  the  first  actress  to  be  taken  up  by  society.  Not 
only  the  foremost  men  in  France,  but  their  wives  as 
well,  threw  open  to  her  the  magic  doors  of  the  Fau- 
bourg Saint-Germain. 


ADR1ENNE    LECOUVREUR  123 

Old  Philippe  the  Regent  was  misgoverning  France 
just  then;  and  to  say  that  his  court  was  morally  rotten 
would  be  gross  flattery.  The  unapproachable  Le- 
couvreur  was  thus  a  freak,  as  well  as  a  delight.  Like 
the  good,  old,  overworked  "breath  of  mountain  air 
in  a  slum,"  this  loveless  genius  swept  through  the 
palaces  of  Paris  and  Versailles.  A  hundred  nobles 
longed  for  her  favor.  Not  one  could  boast  that  he  had 
so  much  as  kissed  her  lips.  Here  is  her  picture,  sketched 
from  the  Mercure,  of  1719: 

Without  being  tall,  she  is  exquisitely  formed  and  has  an 
air  of  distinction.  No  one  on  earth  has  greater  charm.  Her 
eyes  speak  as  eloquently  as  her  lips,  and  often  they  supply  the 
place  of  words.  In  brief,  I  can  compare  her  only  to  a  flawless 
miniature.  Her  head  is  well  poised  on  shapely  shoulders.  Her 
eyes  are  full  of  fire;  her  mouth  is  pretty;  her  nose  slightly 
aquiline.  Her  face  is  wonderfully  adapted  to  express  joy, 
tenderness,  pity,  fear,  sorrow. 

And  Adrienne?  Her  opinion  of  all  this  adulation 
is  summed  up  in  one  sentence  from  a  letter  she  wrote: 

I  spend  three-fourths  of  my  time  in  doing  what  bores  me. 

Among  her  maddest  admirers  was  a  wizened, 
monkey-faced  youth  who  even  then  was  writing  anar- 
chistic doctrines  that  one  day  were  to  help  shake 
France's  worm-eaten  old  monarchy  to  its  fall. 

He  was  Francois  Marie  Arouet.  But  for  reasons 
best  known  to  himself,  he  preferred  to  be  known  sim- 
ply as  "Voltaire"— a  name  to  which  he  had  no  right 


124  STORIES     OF     THE     SUPER- WOMEN 

whatever,  but  by  which  alone  history  remembers  him. 
Voltaire  was  Adrienne  Lecouvreur's  adoring  slave. 
She  treated  him  only  as  a  dear  friend;  but  she  loved 
to  hear  his  vitriolic  anathemas  on  government,  the 
aristocracy,  and  theology.  He  was  in  the  midst  of  one 
of  these  harangues,  at  her  rooms  one  evening,  when 
the  Chevalier  de  Rohan — bearer  of  the  proudest  name 
in  all  Europe — sauntered  in.  He  eyed  the  monkey- 
like  Voltaire  in  amused  disfavor;  then  drawled,  to  no 
one  in  particular: 

"Who  is  this  young  man  who  talks  so  loud?" 

"A  young  man,  sir,"  retorted  Voltaire,  "who  is  not 
forced  to  stagger  along  under  a  name  far  too  great  for 
him;  but  who  manages  to  secure  respect  for  the  name 
he  has." 

De  Rohan's  tasseled  cane  swung  aloft.  Adrienne 
tactfully  prevented  its  fall  by  collapsing  in  a  stage 
faint.  But  the  incident  did  not  close  there.  Next  day 
Voltaire  was  set  upon  by  ruffians  in  Rohan's  pay,  and 
beaten  half  to  death. 

The  victim  did  not  complain.  There  was  no  justice 
for  a  commoner,  in  France  at  that  time,  against  a 
member  of  the  haute  noblesse.  So  Voltaire  contented 
himself  by  going  to  a  fencing  master  and  practicing  for 
a  year  or  more  in  the  use  of  the  small-sword. 

At  the  end  of  that  period,  he  challenged  Rohan 
to  mortal  combat.  Rohan  professed  to  regard  the 
challenge  as  a  piece  of  insolence,  and,  through  royal 
favor,  had  Voltaire,  sent,  by  lettre  de  cachet,  to  the 


ADRIENNE    LECOUVREUR  125 

Bastille.  There  was  no  chance  for  redress.  And,  on 
his  release,  Voltaire  prudently  let  the  feud  drop. 

At  the  perihelion  of  Adrienne's  Dianalike  sway  over 
French  hearts,  a  new  social  lion  arrived  in  Paris.  He 
was  Maurice,  Comte  de  Saxe,  born  of  a  morganatic 
union  between  a  German  countess  and  Augustus  the 
Strong,  King  of  Poland.  (Augustus,  by  the  way,  was 
the  parent  of  no  less  than  one  hundred  and  sixty-three 
children — an  interesting  record  even  in  those  days  of 
large  families,  and  one  that  should  have  gone  far 
toward  earning  for  him  the  title  of  "Father  of  his 
Country.") 

Saxe  came  to  Paris  crowned  with  laurels  won  as  a 
dashing  military  leader,  as  a  fearless  duelist,  and  as 
an  irresistible  heart  breaker.  He  had  won,  by  sheer 
bravery  and  strategic  skill,  the  rank  of  Marshal.  He 
was  of  the  "man  on  horseback"  type  over  whom 
crowds  go  wild. 

The  new  hero  was  a  giant  in  stature,  strikingly  hand- 
some, and  so  strong  that  in  one  hand  he  could  crush 
a  horseshoe  into  a  shapeless  lump.  He  was  a  paladin 
— Ajax,  Don  Juan,  Tamerlane,  Mark  Antony,  Baldur, 
all  rolled  into  one.  He  was  a  glorious  animal,  high  of 
spirits  and  of  hopes,  devoid  of  fear  and  of  the  finer 
feelings.  A  Greek  god — or  whatever  you  will.  And 
about  him  hung  the  glamour  of  countless  conquests 
on  the  battlefield  and  in  love. 

That  such  a  man  should  have  turned  Paris*  head 
was  inevitable.  Equally  natural  was  it  that  Paris 


126  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

women  should  make  fools  of  themselves  over  him. 
But  why  so  gross  and  unintellectual  a  wooer  should 
have  made  the  very  slightest  impression  on  a  character 
like  Adrienne  Lecouvreur's  must  be  relegated  to  the 
"mystery  of  choice"  collection  of  riddles. 

Yet,  at  sight,  she,  who  for  years  had  scoffed  at  pas- 
sion, and  who  had  so  often  declared  her  heart  was 
dead,  felt  that  she  had  met  the  love  of  her  life. 

She  gave  her  revivified  heart  and  her  whole  soul 
into  Maurice  de  Saxe's  keeping,  forever  and  ever. 
There  were  no  reservations.  Hers  was  a  love  that 
could  die  only  with  her  life.  The  former  affairs  were 
to  her  as  half-forgotten  dreams.  Saxe,  and  Saxe  alone, 
held  her  love;  held  it  as  no  other  man  had  been  able 
to. 

Adrienne  at  first  dazzled  Saxe — as  a  tropic  butterfly 
might  dazzle  a  champion  bulldog.  The  dazzle  soon 
wore  off;  but  it  left  behind  a  comfortable  feeling  of 
affection,  of  admiration,  of  gratified  vanity  that  he 
alone  had  been  chosen  by  her,  out  of  all  the  world  of 
suitors. 

With  the  deft  hands  of  a  sculptor,  Adrienne  Le- 
couvreur  molded  Saxe's  rough  nature.  She  refined 
him;  taught  him  to  replace  the  ways  of  the  camp  by 
those  of  civilization;  made  him  less  of  a  beast  and 
more  of  a  man;  showed  him  how  to  think. 

All  of  which  added  to  the  man's  popularity  with 
other  women;  which  was  the  sole  reward  Adrienne 
reaped  for  her  educative  efforts. 


ADRIENNE    LECOUVREUR  127 

Saxe  was  notoriously  untrue  to  her.  In  his  rages 
he  berated  her  as  a  cabby  might  have  scolded  his 
drunken  wife.  He  used  his  power  over  her  to  raise 
hirnself  in  others*  esteem.  In  short,  he  was  wholly  sel- 
fish throughout,  and  he  gruffly  consented  to  accept 
Adrienne's  worship  as  his  just  due. 

But  Adrienne's  love  merely  waxed  stronger  and 
brighter  under  such  abominable  treatment.  She  lived 
for  Saxe  alone. 

The  Duchy  of  Courland  lost  its  duke.  His  place 
was  to  be  filled  by  election.  And  with  the  dukedom 
went  the  hand  of  a  Russian  princess,  whose  face  Saxe 
unchivalrously  compared  to  a  Westphalia  ham. 

Saxe's  ambition  awoke.  In  his  veins  ran  royal  blood. 
He  wanted  to  be  a  duke  and  the  husband  of  a  princess. 
He  entered  as  candidate  in  the  contest.  Lack  of  money, 
for  judicious  bribes  to  the  free  and  incorruptible  elec- 
tors, stood  in  his  way.  He  went,  as  ever  in  trouble, 
to  Adrienne.  And,  as  ever,  she  rose  to  the  occasion. 

She  knew  that,  as  Duke  of  Courland,  he  could  not 
see  her  again,  or  be  within  several  hundred  miles  of 
her.  She  knew,  too,  that,  by  helping  him  with  the 
dukedom,  she  was  helping  to  give  him  to  another 
woman.  A  lesser  love  than  hers  would  have  rebelled 
at  either  possibility. 

But  Adrienne's  love  for  Saxe  was  that  which  not 
only  casts  out  fear,  but  casts  out  self  along  witK  it. 
She  sold  every  piece  of  jewelry  and  every  costly  dress 
and  stick  of  furniture  in  her  possession,  borrowed 


128  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

money  right  and  left,  and  mortgaged  her  salary  at  the 
Comedie  Francaise. 

The  net  result  was  fifteen  thousand  dollars,  which 
she  gladly  handed  over  to  Saxe  for  the  expenses  of  his 
campaign.  With  these  sinews  of  war,  Saxe  hastened 
to  Courland.  There  he  remained  for  a  year;  working 
hard  for  his  election;  making  love  to  the  ham-faced 
princess;  fighting  like  a  Norse  berserker  in  battle  after 
battle. 

He  was  elected  duke.  But  Russia  refused  to  sanc- 
tion the  election.  At  the  head  of  a  handful  of  fellow 
adventurers,  Saxe  went  on  fighting;  performing  prodi- 
gies of  personal  valor  and  strength  in  conflicts  against 
overwhelming  odds.  But  at  last  he  was  hopelessly 
beaten  in  battle,  and  still  more  hopelessly  outpointed  in 
the  game  of  politics.  And  back  he  came  to  Paris — a 
failure. 

Adrienne  used  every  art  and  charm  to  make  him 
forget  his  misfortunes  and  find  happiness  once  more 
in  her  love.  He  treated  her  overtures  as  a  surly  school- 
boy might  treat  those  of  an  over-affectionate  little 
sweetheart. 

He  consented  to  be  petted  and  comforted  by  the 
woman  who  adored  him.  But  he  wreaked  in  her  the 
ill-temper  bred  of  his  defeat.  For  example,  he  pro- 
fessed to  believe  her  untrue  to  him.  He  was  furiously 
jealous — or  pretended  to  be.  And  he  accused  her  of 
the  infidelity  he  had  himself  a  thousand  times  practiced. 

Poor    Adrienne,    aghast    at    such    insane    charges, 


ADRIENNE     LECOUVREUR  129 

vainly  protested  her  innocence  and  her  utter  love  for 
him.  One  of  her  letters  to  Saxe,  during  this  dark  hour, 
has  been  preserved.  It  begins: 

I  am  worn  out  with  grief.  I  have  wept  this  livelong  night. 
It  is  foolish  of  me;  since  I  have  nothing  wherewith  to  reproach 
myself.  But  I  cannot  endure  severity  from  you.  I  am  sus- 
pected, accused  by  you.  Oh,  how  can  I  convince  you — you 
who  alone  can  wound  my  heart? 

In  the  midst  of  this  wretched  misunderstanding 
came  a  crumb  of  comfort  to  the  luckless  woman — al- 
beit the  incident  that  caused  it  led  also,  indirectly,  to 
her  death. 

Francoise  de  Lorraine,  Duchesse  de  Bouillon,  fell 
violently  in  love  with  Saxe,  and  did  not  hesitate  to 
tell  him  so.  Saxe  laughed  in  her  face,  and  hinted  that 
he  cared  too  much  for  Adrienne  Lecouvreur  just  then 
to  be  interested  in  any  one  else.  It  was  not  the  truth, 
for  his  love  for  Adrienne  had  never  served  as  an  ob- 
stacle to  any  other  of  his  myriad  amours.  But  it 
served  to  rebuff  the  duchesse,  who  did  not  interest 
him,  and  to  make  Adrienne  very,  very  happy  when  he 
repeated  to  her  the  conversation.  As  a  by-product, 
it  threw  the  duchesse  into  a  frame  of  mind  described 
by  Congreve  in  his  line  about  the  Gehennalike  fury  of 
a  woman  scorned. 

A  few  days  after  this — in  July,  1  729 — Adrienne 
received  an  anonymous  note  asking  her  to  be  at  a 


130  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

certain  corner  of  the  Luxembourg  Gardens  at  eleven 
o'clock  the  following  morning.  Being  quite  without 
fear,  and  not  at  all  without  curiosity,  she  went. 

No,  she  was  not  set  upon  by  masked  assassins.  She 
found  awaiting  her  nothing  more  formidable  than  a 
pale  and  badly  scared  young  man  in  clerical  garb. 

The  clerical  youth  introduced  himself  as  the  Abbe 
Bouret,  a  hanger-on  of  the  Bouillon  household.  Bouret 
told  Adrienne  that  the  duchesse  had  bribed  him 
heavily  to  send  her  rival  a  box  of  poisoned  bonbons, 
with  a  note  saying  the  candies  were  the  gift  of  an 
unknown  and  humble  admirer. 

The  abbe  had  seen  Adrienne  a  few  nights  earlier 
at  the  theater.  So  struck  had  be  been  by  the  gentle- 
ness and  beauty  of  her  face  that  he  could  not 
carry  out  his  murderous  commission.  Hence  the 
warning. 

Adrienne  took  the  abbe,  and  the  candy,  too, 
straight  to  the  police.  A  bonbon  was  fed  to  a  street 
dog.  The  animal,  screaming  and  writhing  in  agony, 
died  within  fifteen  minutes.  This  seemed,  even  to 
the  eighteenth-century  Paris  police,  a  fairly  good  proof 
of  the  duchesse's  guilt. 

Naturally,  they  did  not  arrest  her  grace.  But  they 
put  certain  respectful  queries  to  her.  Strangely 
enough,  the  duchesse  indignantly  denied  that  she  had 
tried  to  poison  Adrienne. 

Bouret,  cross-examined,  stuck  determinedly  to  his 
story.  So,  through  the  Bouillon  influence,  he  was 


ADRIENNE     LECOUVREUR  131 

thrown  into  prison  and  was  kept  there  in  solitary  con- 
finement, in  a  damp  and  unlighted  dungeon,  with 
occasional  torture,  until  he  saw  the  error  of  his  ways, 
and  confessed  that  his  charge  had  been  a  lie.  Thus 
was  the  faultless  Duchesse  de  Bouillon  triumphantly 
cleared  of  an  unjust  accusation. 

The  duchesse  celebrated  her  vindication  by 
attending  the  theater,  one  night  when  Adrienne 
Lecouvreur  was  playing  in  "Phedre."  The  duchesse 
sat  in  a  stage  box  and  mockingly  applauded  her 
rival. 

Adrienne  paid  no  overt  heed  at  first  to  her 
presence.  But  when  she  came  to  the  scene  in  which 
Phedre  expresses  to  CEnone  her  contempt  for  a  certain 
class  of  women,  Adrienne  turned  her  back  on  the 
wondering  CEnone,  strode  to  the  footlights,  and,  her 
blazing  eyes  seizing  and  gripping  the  duchesse' s,  de- 
claimed directly  to  her  Phedre's  lines: 

"I  know  my  own  faults;  but  I  am  not  one  of  those  brazen 
women  who,  calm  even  in  the  exposure  of  their  crimes,  can 
face  the  world  without  a  blush." 

The  duchesse  shrank  back  as  if  she  had  been  lashed 
across  the  face.  Shielding  her  eyes  with  her  hands, 
she  ran,  shuddering,  from  the  theater. 

Scribe's  play,  "Adrienne  Lecouvreur,"  and  the  opera 
of  the  same  title,  make  much  of  this  episode.  So  did 
eighteenth-century  Paris.  Folk  openly  declared  that 


132  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

the  Duchesse  de  Bouillon  would  not  long  rest  impotent 
under  so  public  an  insult.  And  they  were  right. 

Whether  the  poison  was  sent  in  a  bouquet,  as  con- 
temporary writers  declared,  or  in  some  other  form> 
Adrienne  was  suddenly  stricken  by  mortal  illness. 

Less  than  half  a  century  had  passed  since  the  dying 
King  Charles  had  "lived  a  week  in  spite  of  the  best 
physicians  in  England."  And  the  science  of  medicine 
had  crept  forward  but  few  hesitating  steps  in  the  past 
forty-five  years.  Poor,  stricken  Adrienne  did  not  even 
need  the  best  malpractice  in  France  to  help  her  to  her 
grave. 

Doctors  great  and  doctors  greater — the  quacks  of 
the  Rive  Gauche  and  the  higher-priced  quacks  of  court 
and  Faubourg — all  stood  in  turn  at  the  dying  girl's 
bedside  and  consulted  gravely  in  Latin;  while  Saxe 
raged  at  them  and  cursed  them  for  a  parcel  of  solemn 
nincompoops — which  they  were. 

After  a  time  they  all  trooped  away,  these  long-faced 
men  of  pill  and  potion.  They  confessed  they  could 
find  no  remedy.  They  could  not  so  much  as  name  the 
ailment.  At  least,  they  did  not — aloud.  For  the 
memory  of  the  first  poison  scandal  and  its  revealer's 
fate  was  still  fresh  in  men's  minds. 

And  after  the  doctors  came  the  priest;  a  priest 
hastily  summoned  by  the  infidel  Voltaire,  who  had 
been  crying  outside  the  death-chamber  door. 

The  priest  was  among  the  most  bigoted  of  his  kind. 
In  his  eyes,  the  victim  was  not  the  reigning  beauty  of 


ADRIENNE     LECOUVREUR  133 

Paris,  but  a  sinning  creature  who  had  defied  God's 
laws  by  going  on  the  stage. 

Theology  in  those  days  barred  actors  and  actresses 
from  the  blessings  of  the  Church. 

Yet,  bigoted  as  was  this  particular  priest,  he  was 
not  wholly  heartless.  The  weeping  little  monkeylike 
man  crouched  on  the  stairs  outside  the  door  may  have 
touched  his  heart;  for  Voltaire  could  be  wondrous 
eloquent  and  persuasive.  Or  the  red-eyed,  raging 
giant  on  his  knees  at  the  bedside  may  have  appealed 
to  his  pity;  almost  as  much  as  did  the  lovely  white  face 
lying  so  still  there  among  the  pillows.  At  all  events, 
the  good  priest  consented  to  strain  a  point. 

If  Adrienne  would  adjure  her  allegiance  to  the  stage1 
and  banish  all  earthly  thoughts,  he  would  absolve  her 
and  would  grant  her  the  rite  of  Extreme  Unction. 

"Do  you  place  your  hope  in  the  God  of  the 
Universe?"  he  intoned. 

Slowly  the  great  dark  eyes — already  wide  with  the 
Eternal  Mystery — turned  from  the  priest  to  the  sobbing 
giant  who  knelt  at  the  opposite  side  of  her  bed. 
Adrienne  Lecouvreur  stretched  out  her  arms  toward 
Saxe,  for  the  last  of  many  thousand  times.  Pointing 
at  her  weeping  lover,  she  whispered  to  the  priest: 

"There  is  my  Universe,  my  Hope,  my  God!" 

The  good  priest  scuttled  away  in  pious  horror. 
Adrienne  Lecouvreur  sank  back  upon  the  pillows, 
dead — and  unabsolved. 

That    night — acting    on    a    strong    hint    from    the 


134  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER- WOMEN 

Bouillon  family,  who  had  heard  that  Voltaire  intended 
to  demand  an  autopsy — the  police  carried  Adrienne's 
body  away  in  a  cab,  and  buried  it  in  a  bed  of  quick- 
lime. 

For  nearly  two  long  months,   Maurice,   Comte  de 
Saxe,  scarcely  looked  at  another  woman. 


CHAPTER  SEVEN. 

CLEOPATRA  | 

•THE  SERPENT  OF  OLD  NILE" 

SOME   thirty-five   years   ago,    in    the   north   Jersey 
village  of  Pompton,   the  township  undertaker's 
barn  burned  down.      It  was  a  spectacular  mid- 
night  fire.      All    the   natives   turned    out   to   view   it. 
Dominie  Jansen  even  hinted,  I  remember,  that  it  was 
a  visitation  on  the  community  for  some  of  his  neigh- 
bors* sins.     Whereat,  Lem  Saulsbury  took  the  pledge 
— for  the  eighth  time  that  year. 

Well,  the  next  week,  when  the  Pompton  Clarion 
appeared,  no  mention  was  made  of  the  fire — the  only 
event  of  intense  human  interest,  by  the  way,  since  Joel 
Binswanger,  the  official  local  sot,  six  months  earlier 
had,  at  the  village  tavern,  swallowed  a  half-pint  flask 
of  carbolic  acid — set  aside  for  cleaning  the  brasses — 
under  the  conviction  that  it  was  applejack.  Joel  had 
complained  of  a  rough  throat  and  an  unwonted  taste 
in  his  mouth  for  days  afterward.  The  Clarion  editor, 
taken  to  task  for  printing  nothing  about  the  fire,  ex- 
cused the  omission  by  saying; 


136  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

"What'd  'a  been  the  use  of  writing  the  story? 
Everybody  knows  about  it." 

That's  all  there  is  to  the  anecdote.  Yes,  I've  heard 
better,  myself.  I've  even  heard  the  same  one  better 
told.  It  serves,  though,  as  a  fitting  preamble  to  my 
story  about  Cleopatra. 

"Everybody  knows  about  it." 

Who  can  say  anything  about  her  that  you  have  not 
heard?  Perhaps  I  can.  Probably  not.  Will  you 
be  patient  with  me,  and,  even  as  tourists  visit 
European  shrines  to  verify  their  Baedekers,  read  this 
story  to  verify  what  you  have  always  known? 
Cleopatra  cannot  be  omitted  from  any  super-woman 
series.  And  I  will  make  her  as  interesting  as  I  know 
how. 

Personally,  I  belive  the  Pomptonians  would  far 
rather  have  read  about  that  barn  blaze,  which  they  had 
seen,  than  about  the  conflagration  of  a  whole  foreign 
metropolis. 

At  sixteen — in  52  B.  C. — Cleopatra's  known  career 
as  a  heartbreaker  began;  although  there  are  rumors 
of  more  than  one  still  earlier  affair,  with  Egyptian 
nobles  as  their  heroes. 

She  was  the  daughter  of  Ptolemy  Auletes — Ptolemy 
the  Piper — cordially  hated  ruler  of  Egypt.  Cleopatra 
and  her  baby  brother,  young  Ptolemy,  nominally 
shared  the  throne  for  a  time.  They  were  both 
children.  They  ruled  much  as  the  baby  "drives"  when 
he  holds  the  reins  of  the  horse  at  whose  head  is  the 


CLEOPATRA  137 

hostler's  guiding  hand.  All  manner  of  adventurers — 
both  native  and  Greek — were  the  real  rulers. 

One  of  these  factions  drove  Cleopatra  from  the 
throne  and  from  her  capital  at  Alexandria,  leaving  the 
"triple  Uraeus  crown,"  with  its  mystic  lotus  adorn- 
ments, on  the  head  of  baby  Ptolemy  alone. 

The  crown  was  the  only  fragment  of  actual  kingship 
the  child  possessed.  The  power  and  the  graft  lay  in 
the  hands  of  a  trio  of  industriously  grasping  Greek  ad- 
venturers. 

Cleopatra,  meantime,  out  in  the  cold,  schemed 
to  regain  her  place  on  the  double  throne,  and,  even 
at  that  early  age,  amused  herself  in  the  interim  by 
planning  the  tortures  she  would  wreak  on  little  Ptolemy 
when  her  turn  should  come. 

While  she  was  casting  about  for  means  to  outwit 
the  Greeks,  and  seeking  means  to  buy  up  a  mercenary 
army  of  invasion,  she  learned  that  Julius  Caesar,  an 
elderly  Roman  of  vast  repute  as  a  conqueror,  had  come 
to  Alexandria  at  the  head  of  a  few  legions,  on  a  mis- 
sion of  diplomacy. 

Cleopatra  may  have  known  little  of  men's  strength, 
but  already  she  was  a  profound  student  of  their  weak- 
nesses. 

She  began  to  ask  questions  about  Caesar.  Brush- 
ing away  (as  immaterial  if  true),  her  scared  native 
attendants*  statements  that  he  had  the  body  of  an  ele- 
phant, the  head  of  a  tiger,  and  the  claws  of  a  dragon, 
and  that  he  fed  on  prisoners  served  raw,  she  pumped 


138  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

one  or  two  exiled  Romans  and  gleaned  an  inkling  of 
the  conqueror's  history. 

With  the  details  of  Caesar's  Gallic  invasion,  his 
crushing  of  Pompey,  and  his  bullying  of  semihostile 
fellow  Romans,  she  did  not  in  the  least  concern  her- 
self. What  most  interested  Cleopatra  were  the  follow- 
ing domestic  revelations: 

He  had  been  married  at  least  four  times,  and  three 
of  his  wives  were  still  living.  Cossutia,  the  wife  of 
his  youth,  he  had  divorced  by  law  because  he  had 
been  captivated  by  the  charms  of  one  Cornelia,  whom 
he  had  forthwith  married,  and  who  had  died  before  he 
had  had  time  to  name  her  successor. 

Next  in  order  he  had  wed  Pompeia;  and,  on  the 
barest  rumor  of  indiscretion  on  her  part,  had  announced 
dramatically:  "Caesar's  wife  must  be  above  suspicion!" 
and  had  divorced  her  to  marry  his  present  spouse, 
Calpurnia. 

The  interstices  between  these  unions  had  been 
garnished  with  many  a  love  episode.  Adamant  as 
he  was  toward  men,  Caesar  was  far  from  being  an 
anchorite  where  women  were  concerned;  and  he  had 
the  repute  of  being  unswervingly  loyal  to  the  woman 
whom  he,  at  the  time,  chanced  to  love. 

This  scurrilous  information  was  quite  enough  for 
Cleopatra.  She  had  her  plans  accordingly.  She  would 
see  Caesar.  More  to  the  point,  she  would  be  seen  by 
Caesar.  But  how?  Caesar  was  in  Alexandria,  the 
stronghold  of  her  enemies.  It  would  mean  capture 


CLEOPATRA  139 

and  subsequent  death  for  Cleopatra  to  be  found  in  the 
city.  Yet  she  planned  not  only  to  enter  Alexandria, 
but  to  make  her  first  appearance  before  Caesar  in  a 
way  designed  to  catch  his  attention  and  more  than 
friendly  interest  from  the  very  start. 

Julius  Caesar  sat  in  the  great  audience  hall  of  the 
Alexandria  palace,  whose  use  he  had  commandeered 
as  his  temporary  headquarters.  Behind  him  stood  his 
guards;  heavy  armored,  tanned  of  face;  short,  thick 
swords  at  hip.  Before  his  dais  trailed  a  procession  of 
folk  who  hated  him  as  starkly  as  they  feared  him. 

They  were  Egyptians  with  favors  to  ask,  and  they 
bore  gifts  to  indorse  their  pleas.  They  were  Greeks 
who  sought  to  outwit  the  barbarian  victor,  or  to  trick 
him  into  the  granting  of  concessions.  One  by  one  the 
suppliants  crawled  past,  each  crying  out  an  appeal  or 
a  grievance.  Nearly  every  one  made  a  peace  offering, 
until  the  mass  of  gifts  was  stacked  high  on  the  stone 
floor  of  the  audience  hall. 

Presently  entered  two  black  porters,  (strapping 
Nubian  giants) ,  who  bore  lightly  between  them  a  roll  of 
rare  Persian  carpet.  They  halted,  laid  down  their 
burden  on  the  floor  at  Caesar's  feet,  fell  on  their  knees 
in  obeisance,  and — waited.  On  the  floor  lay  the  roll 
of  priceless  weave,  no  one  coming  forward  to  make 
the  rich  gift  an  excuse  for  the  urging  of  some  boon. 

Caesar  grew  inquisitive.  He  leaned  forward  to  ex- 
amine the  tight-folded,  shimmering  rug  more  carefully. 
As  he  did  so,  the  folds  were  suddenly  flung  aside,  and 


140  STORIES     OF     THE     SUPER-WOMEN 

a  girl  leaped  to  her  feet  from  among  them.  Thus  had 
Cleopatra  entered  Alexandria.  Thus  had  she  pene- 
trated to  Caesar's  presence.  Thus,  too,  by  her  craft 
and  daring,  had  she  won  the  attention  of  the  man 
whose  daring  and  craft  had  conquered  the  world. 

Caesar  stared  in  delighted  interest.  He  saw,  standing 
gracefully — and  wholly  undraped — before  him,  a 
slender,  red-haired  girl,  snub-nosed  and  of  no  special 
beauty.  But,  at  a  glance,  this  man  who  saw  every- 
thing, saw,  too,  that  she  possessed  an  unnameable 
fascination — a  magnetism — that  was  greater  by  far 
than  that  of  any  other  woman  he  had  known  in  all 
his  fifty-eight  years. 

It  was  Julius  Caesar's  first  introduction  to  a  super- 
woman;  to  the  super- woman  of  super-women;  to  a 
woman  beside  whose  snub-nosed,  plain  face,  under  its 
shock  of  red  hair,  the  memory  of  the  Roman  beauties 
who  had  so  often  charmed  his  idle  hours  grew  dim  and 
confused. 

Cleopatra,  on  her  part,  saw  nothing  so  impressive 
as  an  elephant-tiger-dragon  monster.  She  beheld  a 
thin,  undersized  man,  nearly  sixty  years  old,  hawk- 
nosed,  inscrutable  of  eye,  on  whose  thin  gray  locks,  to 
mask  his  fast-growing  baldness,  rested  a  chaplet  of 
laurel  leaves. 

This  was  the  hero  whose  cunning  and  whose  war 
genius  had  caused  sceptered  men  to  grovel  at  his  feet, 
and  had  made  stubborn  republican  Rome  his  cringing 
servant.  But  he  was  also  the  man  whose  weakness 


CLEOPATRA  141 

was  an  attractive  woman.  And  on  this  weakness 
Cleopatra  at  once  proceeded  to  play. 

Yet  she  speedily  found  that  Caesar's  was  but  a  sur- 
face weakness,  and  that  beneath  it  lay  iron.  Gladly 
he  consented  to  save  her  from  her  foes,  and  even  in  a 
measure  to  let  her  punish  such  of  those  foes  as  were 
of  no  use  to  him.  But  as  for  making  her  the  undisputed 
Queen  of  Egypt  and  setting  her  triumphantly  and  in- 
dependently on  the  throne  of  her  ancestors,  at  Rome's 
expense — he  had  not  the  remotest  idea  of  doing  that. 

Nor  could  all  her  most  bewildering  blandishments 
wring  such  a  foolish  concession  from  him.  He  made 
love  to  her — ardent  love;  but  he  did  not  let  love  inter- 
fere in  any  way  with  politics. 

Instead  of  carrying  her  to  the  throne,  through  seas 
of  her  enemies*  blood,  he  carried  Cleopatra  back  to 
Rome  with  him  and,  to  the  scandal  of  the  whole  city, 
installed  her  in  a  huge  marble  villa  there- 

And  there,  no  secret  being  made  of  Caesar's  infatu- 
ation for  her,  Cleopatra  remained  for  the  next  few 
years;  indeed,  until  Caesar's  death.  There,  too,  Caesar's 
son,  Caesarion,  was  born;  and  with  the  boy's  birth 
came  to  Cleopatra  the  hope  that  Caesar  would  will  to 
him  all  his  vast  estates  and  other  wealth;  which  would 
have  been  some  slight  compensation  for  the  nonrestor- 
ing  of  her  throne. 

While  Cleopatra  abode  in  Rome,  more  than  one 
man  of  world-fame  bowed  in  homage  before  her. 
For  example,  Lepidus — fat,  stupid,  inordinately  rich, 


142  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

fit  dupe  for  cleverer  politicians.  Marcus  Antonius,  too, 
— Caesar's  protege,  and  at  this  time  a  swaggering, 
lovable,  dissolute  soldier-demagogue,  whose  fortunes 
were  so  undissolubly  fastened  to  Caesar's  that  he,  the 
winner  of  a  horde  of  women,  dared  not  lift  his  eyes 
to  the  woman  Caesar  loved. 

Among  the  rest — Marcus  Brutus,  snarling  Casca,  and 
the  others — came  one  more  guest  to  the  villa — a  hard- 
faced,  cold-eyed  youth  whom  Cleopatra  hated.  For 
he  was  Caius  Octavius,  Caesar's  nephew  and  presump- 
tive heir;  the  man  who  was,  years  hence,  to  be  the 
Emperor  Augustus. 

At  length,  one  day,  Rome's  streets  surged  with  hys- 
terical mobs  and  factions.  And  news  came  to  the 
villa  that  Caesar  had  been  assassinated  at  the  Forum. 
Speedily  an  angry  crowd  besieged  Cleopatra's  house. 

Now  that  the  all-feared  Caesar  no  longer  lived  to 
protect  her,  the  people  were  keen  to  wreak  punishment 
on  this  foreign  sorceress  who  had  enmeshed  the  mur- 
dered man's  brain,  and  had  made  him  squander  upon 
her  so  much  of  the  public  wealth  that  might  better  have 
gone  into  Roman  pockets.  Rome's  new  government, 
too,  at  once  ordered  her  expulsion  from  the  city. 

Cleopatra,  avoiding  the  mob  and  doging  arrest,  fled 
from  Rome  with  her  son,  her  fortune,  and  her  few 
faithful  serfs.  One  more  hope  was  gone.  For,  instead 
of  leaving  his  money  to  Caesarion,  Caesar,  in  his  will, 
had  made  the  cold-eyed  youth,  Caius  Octavius,  his 
heir. 


CLEOPATRA  143 

Back  to  the  East  went  Cleopatra,  her  sun  of  success 
temporarily  in  shadow.  In  semi-empty,  if  regal,  state, 
she  queened  it  for  a  time,  her  title  barren,  her  real 
power  in  Egypt  practically  confined  to  her  brain  and 
to  her  charm.  Nominal  Queen  of  Egypt,  she  was  still 
merely  holding  the  reins,  while  iron-handed  Rome 
strode  at  the  horse's  head. 

From  afar,  she  heard  from  time  to  time  the  tidings 
from  Rome.  The  men  who  had  slain  Caesar  had  them- 
selves been  overthrown.  In  their  place  Rome — and 
all  the  world — was  ruled  by  a  triumvirate  made  up  of 
three  men  she  well  remembered — Octavius,  Antony, 
and  Lepidus. 

The  next  news  was  that  Antony  and  Octavius  had 
painlessly  extracted  Lepidus  from  the  combination,  and 
were  about  to  divide  the  government  of  the  whole 
known  world  between  themselves.  Antony,  to  whom 
first  choice  was  given,  selected  the  eastern  half  for  his 
share,  leaving  the  west  to  Octavius. 

Then  came  word  that  Antony  was  on  his  way  toward 
Egypt;  thither  bound  in  order  to  investigate  certain 
grave  charges  made  by  her  subjects  against  Cleopatra 
herself. 

Once  more  were  the  queen's  throne  and  her  life 
itself  in  peril.  And  once  more  she  called  upon  her 
matchless  power  over  men  to  meet  and  overcome  the 
new  menace.  When  Antony  drew  near  to  the  capital, 
Cleopatra  set  forth  to  meet  him;  not  with  such  an 
army  as  she  might  perchance  have  scraped  together 


144  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER- WOMEN 

to  oppose  the  invader,  but  relying  solely  on  her  own 
charms. 

Antony  by  this  time  was  well  past  his  first  youth. 
Here  is  Plutarch's  word  picture  of  him: 

He  was  of  a  noble  presence.  He  had  a  goodly,  thick 
beard,  a  broad  forehead,  and  a  crooked  nose.  And  there  ap- 
peared such  a  manly  look  in  his  countenance  38  is  seen  in  the 
statues  of  Hercules.  .  .  .  And  it  is  incredible  what  marvelous 
love  he  won. 

Yes,  and  it  is  incredible  into  what  messes  that  same 
"marvelous  love,"  first  and  last,  dragged  him.  He 
had  a  wondrous  genius  for  war  and  for  statesmanship; 
but  ever,  just  as  those  qualities  lifted  him  to  eminence, 
some  woman  would  drag  him  down.  For  instance,  as 
a  young  man,  his  budding  political  hopes  were  wrecked 
by  Flavia,  a  charmer  who  enslaved  him.  Later,  Rome 
turned  a  deaf  ear  to  the  tales  of  his  military  glory 
because  he  chose  to  escort  openly  along  the  Appian 
Way  a  frail  beauty  named  Cytheria,  in  a  chariot  drawn 
by  four  lions.  In  rapid  succession  he — like  his  idol, 
Caesar — married  four  wives. 

Flavia  was  the  first — she  who  blasted  his  early  states- 
manship ambitions;  next  Antonia,  from  whom  he  soon 
separated;  third,  Fulvia,  a  shrew  who  made  his  home 
life  a  burden,  and  whose  temper  drove  him  far  from 
her — not  that  he  really  needed  such  incentive. 

But  Fulvia  loved  him,  as  did  all  women.  For  when 
Cicero  lay  dead,  she  went  to  the  orator's  bier  and 


CLEOPATRA  145 

thrust  a  bodkin  through  the  once  magic  tongue;  thus 
punishing  the  tongue,  she  explained,  for  its  calumnies 
against  her  beloved  husband. 

Fulvia  was  not  exactly  a  cozy-corner  wife,  as  you, 
perhaps,  have  observed;  yet,  when  she  died,  Antony 
was  heartily  sorry.  He  said  so.  At  the  time,  he  was 
far  away  from  Rome  and  home — he  had  not  taken 
Fulvia  to  Egypt  with  him — and  was  basking  in  Cleo- 
patra's wiles.  On  a  visit  to  Rome  he  next  married 
Octavia,  sister  of  Octavius.  It  was  a  state  match.  He 
speedily  deserted  her  and  hurried  back  to  Egypt. 

Antony — true  lover  and  false  husband,  hero  and 
fool,  rake  and  statesman — had  fifty  sides  to  his  char- 
acter— and  a  woman  was  on  every  side.  In  times  of 
peace  he  wallowed  in  the  wildest  dissipation,  and  spent 
vast  fortunes  without  a  second  thought.  In  war,  he 
was  the  idol  of  his  men,  carousing  with  them,  sharing 
their  hard  fare  and  harder  life,  never  losing  their 
adoring  respect,  always  the  hero  for  whom  they  would 
blithely  die. 

And  so  back  to  the  story. 

Up  the  River  Cydnus  sailed  Antony,  bent  on  restor- 
ing order  to  Egypt  and  punishing  the  cruel  Cleopatra. 
And  down  the  River  Cydnus  to  meet  him  came 
Cleopatra. 

The  barge,  wherein  lay  the  queen,  had  sails  of  pur- 
ple and  gold.  It  was  propelled  by  oars  of  pure  silver. 
Around  the  recumbent  Cleopatra  were  beautiful  at- 
tendants, clad — or  unclad  —  as  Nymphs,  Graces, 


146  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

Cupids.  She  herself  wore,  on  her  left  ankle,  a  jeweled 
band  in  which  was  set  a  sacred  scarab.  That  was  the 
full  extent  of  her  costume. 

At  a  single  look,  Antony  forgot  forever  the  punitive 
object  of  his  journey  to  Egypt;  forgot  that  he  was 
ruler  of  half  the  world,  and  that  he  had  the  cleverness 
and  power  to  oust  Octavius  from  the  other  half,  and 
to  rule  it  all.  He  forgot  everything  except  that  he 
loved  her,  and  was  content  to  be  her  helpless  and 
happy  slave;  that  she  was  the  supreme  love  of  his 
thousand  loves;  that  the  world  was  well  lost  for  such 
love  as  hers. 

From  that  moment  the  old-time  magnetic  statesman 
and  general,  Marcus  Antonius — with  his  shrewd  plans 
for  world  conquest — was  dead.  In  his  place  lived 
Mark  Antony,  prince  of  lovers;  a  man  whose  sole 
thought  and  aim  in  life  consisted  in  worshipping  at  the 
bare  feet  of  a  red-haired,  snub-nosed  Egyptian  woman. 

Caesar  had  loved  Cleopatra — and  won.  Mark 
Antony  loved  her — and  lost;  lost  everything — except 
perfect  happiness.  But  for  her,  Antony  might  have 
striven  night  and  day,  with  brain,  will,  and  body,  using 
his  friends  as  sacrifices,  employing  a  statesmanship  that 
was  black  treachery,  drenching  all  Europe  in  blood. 
But  for  Cleopatra,  he  might  have  done  all  this.  He 
might,  as  a  result,  have  ousted  Octavius  and  made 
himself,  for  the  minute,  master  of  all  the  world — as 
a  price  for  his  years  of  racking  toil — before  some 
patriotic  assassin  got  a  chance  to  kill  him. 


CLEOPATRA  147 

Thanks  to  Cleopatra's  malign  influence,  the  old 
warrior  spent  his  last  years,  instead,  in  a  golden  Fool's 
Paradise,  whose  joys  have  become  historic.  Where- 
fore, the  schoolbooks  hold  up  Antony  as  a  horrible 
example  of  what  a  man  may  throw  away,  through 
folly. 

I  have  tried,  in  the  preceding  few  paragraphs,  to  re- 
enforce  the  school-books*  teachings;  to  show  that  it 
is  better  to  toil  than  to  trifle,  to  sweat  and  suffer  than  to 
saunter  through  Arcady,  to  die  dead-tired  than  to  die 
divinely  happy.  I  am  sure  I  make  the  point  clear.  If 
I  do  not,  the  fault  is  not  mine;  and  the  sad,  sad  ex- 
ample of  Antony  has  gone  for  naught. 

They  had  a  wonderful  time  there,  in  the  Lotus  Land, 
these  two  super-lovers.  Each  had  had  a  host  of  earlier 
"affairs."  But  these  now  served  merely  as  do  the  many 
rough  "detail  sketches"  that  work  up  at  last  into  the 
perfected  picture. 

It  was  no  heavy-tragedy  romance.  The  two  mature 
lovers  had  a  saving  sense  of  fun  that  sent  them  on  larks 
worthy  of  high-school  revelers.  By  night,  they  would 
go  in  disguise  through  the  city,  to  revel  unrecognized  at 
some  peasant  wedding  or  orgy. 

Once,  the  incognito  Antony,  pn  such  an  expedition, 
got  a  sound  thrashing  and  a  broken  head  from  taking 
too  prominent  a  part  on  a  slum  festivity.  And  Cleo- 
patra never  let  him  hear  the  last  of  it.  That  the  all- 
conquering  Marcus  Antonius  should  have  been  beaten 
up  by  a  crowd  of  Egyptian  fellaheen,  who  trembled 


148  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

at  the  very  mention  of  his  name,  struck  her  as  the  joke 
of  the  century. 

She  had  a  right  lively  sense  of  humor,  had  this 
"Serpent  of  Old  Nile,"  as  Antony  playfully  nicknamed 
her.  And  probably  this  sense  of  humor  was  one  of 
the  strongest  fetters  that  bound  to  her  the  love  veteran, 
who  was  sick  of  a  succession  of  statelily  humorless 
Roman  beauties. 

Celopatra  was  forever  playing  practical  jokes  on 
her  lover.  Once,  for  example,  as  she  and  Antony  sat 
fishing  off  their  anchored  barge  in  the  Alexandria 
harbor,  Antony  wagered  that  he  would  make  the  first 
catch.  Cleopatra  took  the  bet.  A  moment  afterward 
Antony  felt  a  mighty  tug  at  his  line.  With  the  zest  of 
a  born  fisherman,  he  "drew  in." 

He  brought  to  the  surface,  suspended  from  his  hook, 
an  enormous  fish — dried,  boned,  and  salted!  Cleo- 
patra had  privily  sent  one  of  her  divers  over  the  far 
side  of  the  barge  to  swim  down  and  fasten  the  salted 
fish  to  her  sweetheart's  line. 

Again,  the  talk  ran  to  the  unbelievable  cost  of  some 
of  the  feasts  the  ancient  Persian  monarchs  had  been 
wont  to  give,  and  the  wholesale  quantity  of  priceless 
wines  drunk  at  those  banquets.  Whereat,  Cleopatra 
offered  to  wager  that  she  could  drink  ten  million  ses- 
terces ($450,000)  worth  of  wine  at  a  single  sitting. 

Antony  loudly  assured  her  that  the  thing  was  im- 
possible. Even  so  redoubtable  a  tankard  man  as  himself 
could  not  hope  to  drink  one-hundredth  that  value  of 


CLEOPATRA  149 

wine  in  the  most  protracted  debauch.  She  insisted. 
The  wager  was  made. 

Calling  for  a  goblet  of  "slaves'  wine" — a  species  of 
vinegar — the  queen  dropped  into  it  the  largest  pearl 
of  Egypt's  royal  treasury,  a  gem  appraised  at  four 
hundred  and  fifty  thousand  dollars.  The  treasure  dis- 
solved under  the  vinegar's  sharp  acid;  and  Cleopatra 
— to  a  gasp  of  horror  from  the  more  frugal  onlookers — 
drained  the  goblet. 

Such  banquets  staggered  Egypt's  resources.  So  did 
other  jolly  extravagances.  Rumors  of  Antony's  strange 
infatuation  reached  Rome.  Rome  was  used  to  An- 
tony's love  affairs,  and  Rome  knew  Cleopatra  of 
old. 

So  Rome  merely  grinned  and  shrugged  its  shoulders. 
But  when  the  big  revenues  that  Antony  had  promised 
to  wring  from  the  conquered  country  failed  to  arrive, 
Rome — sorely  wounded  in  the  pocketbook — began  to 
protest. 

Antony's  friends  at  home  pointed  out  to  him  what 
capital  the  crafty  Octavius  would  try  to  make  of  this 
new-born  dissatisfaction  against  his  colleague.  In  a 
momentary  gleam  of  sanity,  Antony  left  the  weeping 
Cleopatra  and  hastened  back  to  Rome  to  face  his 
enemies. 

There,  all  too  briefly,  the  man*s  old  genius  flamed 
up.  He  appeased  the  populace,  -won  his  former  as- 
cendency over  the  disapproving  Senate,  blocked  Oc- 
tavius* plot  to  hurl  him  from  power,  and  sealed  his 


150  STORIES      OF     THE     SUPER-WOMEN 

campaign  of  inspired  diplomacy  by  marrying  his  rival's 
sister,  Octavia. 

At  a  stroke,  Antony  had  won  back  all  he  had  lost. 
Octavius  was  checkmated,  the  people  \vere  enthusias- 
tic, and  once  more  Antony  had  world  rulership  within 
his  easy  reach. 

But  in  busy,  iron-hard  Rome,  he  fell  to  remembering 
the  lazy  sunshine  of  Egypt.  The  primly  gentle  Octavia 
was  hopelessly  insipid  by  contrast  with  the  glowing 
super-woman.  Memory  tugged,  ever  harder  and 
harder. 

Even  if  this  story  were  fiction,  instead  of  prosy  fact, 
you  would  foresee  just  what  was  bound  to  happen. 
Back  to  Egypt,  on  some  flimsy  pretext,  fled  Antony. 
He  turned  his  back  on  Rome,  on  his  wife,  on  Octavius, 
on  friend,  on  foe,  on  future.  He  was  to  see  none  of 
them  again.  Nor  was  there  to  be  a  second  outflash  of 
his  old  genius.  The  rest  was — Cleopatra. 

The  reunited  lovers  flew  from  bliss  to  bliss, 
from  one  mad  extravagance  to  another.  Statecraft, 
regal  dignity — common  sense — all  went  by  the 
board- 

At  Rome,  the  effect  of  Antony's  whirlwind  reinstate- 
ment campaign  gradually  wore  off.  Revenues  did  not 
flow  in  from  Egypt.  But  all  sorts  of  wild  stories  did. 
And  the  wilder  they  were,  the  truer  they  were.  Rome 
at  large  did  not  bother  its  brutal  head  over  Antony's 
morals.  But  all  Rome  stormed  and  howled  over  the 
fact  that  the  boundlessly  rich  kingdom  of  Egypt  was 


CLEOPATRA  151 

bringing  in  practically  no  more  money  to  the  coffers 
of  Rome.  It  was  as  if  men  who  had  invested  a  fortune 
in  a  thirty-story  office  building  should  find  that  the 
superintendent  was  holding  back  all  the  rents  and 
losing  tenants  every  day. 

Octavius  was  quick  to  take  advantage  of  all  this. 
Personally,  he  hated  Antony,  and  he  was  bitterly  re- 
sentful of  his  sister's  desertion.  Politically,  he  wanted 
to  be  lord  of  the  world — as  later  he  was — under  the 
title  of  "Emperor  Augustus;"  and  poor,  enfeebled 
Antony  alone  stood  in  his  way. 

On  the  plea  that  a  new  money-getter  was  needed 
for  Rome  in  Antony's  place,  Octavius  easily  roused 
public  feeling  into  a  clamor  that  Egypt  be  invaded, 
Antony  overthrown,  and  Cleopatra  put  to  death. 
Octavius,  as  master  of  Rome,  headed  the  punitive  army 
of  invasion. 

Again,  on  news  of  his  foes*  approach,  Antony's 
spirit — but  this  time  not  his  genius — flickered  back  to 
a  ghost  of  its  old  flame.  By  messenger,  he  sent  Octavius 
a  very  sporting  offer:  namely,  that  waste  of  lives  be 
avoided  by  Octavius  and  Antony  meeting  in  single 
combat,  to  the  death;  "winner  take  all." 

But  Octavius  was  a  politician,  not  a  d'Artagnan; 
•which  is  why  he  at  last  became  Emperor  of  Rome  and 
ruler  of  the  known  earth.  He  had  not  those  cold,  light 
eyes  and  thin  lips  for  nothing.  He  was  a  strategist 
rather  than  a  gladiator.  Back  to  the  challenger  came 
this  terse  reply: 


152  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

"Can  Antony  find  no  readier  mode  of  death  than 
at  the  sword  of  Octavius?" 

On  moved  the  invaders.  And  Antony  took  enough 
time  from  Cleopatra's  side  to  make  halfhearted  prepar- 
ations to  resist.  The  first  clash  of  any  importance  was 
the  sea  fight  off  Actium.  There  Fortune  was  inclined 
for  the  time  to  smile  once  again  on  her  old  prime 
favorite.  All  along  the  line,  Antony's  warships  were 
driving  back  and  breaking  the  formation  of  Octavius*. 
Then,  at  the  crucial  moment  of  the  fight,  Cleopatra, 
who,  in  a  royal  galley,  was  watching  the  conflict,  or- 
dered her  galley  put  about  and  headed  for  the  distant 
shore.  To  this  day  no  one  knows  whether  her  fatal 
order  was  the  result  of  a  whim  or  of  sudden  cowardice 
or  of  both. 

Her  galley  swept  away  from  the  battle.  Antony, 
seeing  it  depart,  feared  Cleopatra  might  have  been 
wounded  by  a  stray  arrow.  At  once  he  forgot  that 
the  issue  of  the  day  depended  solely  on  him.  He 
realized  only  that  the  woman  he  worshipped  might  be 
injured.  And  he  ordered  his  own  galley  to  put  off 
in  pursuit  of  Cleopatra's. 

The  captains  of  Antony's  other  ships,  seeing  their 
leader  apparently  running  away,  were  seized  with 
panic  terror,  and  followed.  The  fight  became  a  rout. 
Antony's  fleet  was  annihilated. 

With  that  strangely  won  battle,  the  last  real  ob- 
stacle between  Octavius  and  complete  victory  was 
down.  Steadily  the  conqueror  advanced  on  Alexan- 


CLEOPATRA  153 

dria.  Cleopatra  saw  how  things  were  going.  She 
knew  that  Antony  was  forever  broken,  and  that,  as 
a  protector  against  the  oncoming  Romans,  he  was 
helpless.  So  she  thriftily  shifted  her  allegiance  to 
Octavius;  sending  him  word  that  she  was  his  admiring 
slave,  and  that  she  craved  a  personal  interview. 

It  was  the  same  old  siren  trick.  At  sight,  when  she 
-was  sixteen,  she  had  won  Caesar's  heart;  at  sight,  when 
she  was  twenty-eight,  she  had  won  Antony's  heart 
and  soul.  On  sight,  now,  at  thirty-eight,  she  hoped  to 
make  of  Octavius  a  second  Antony.  But  Caesar  had 
had  black  eyes,  and  Antony's  eyes  were  a  soft  brown; 
whereas  the  eyes  of  Octavius  were  pale  gray  and  fire- 
less.  Had  Cleopatra  bothered  to  study  physiognomy, 
she  might  have  sought  some  more  hopeful  plan  than 
to  enslave  such  a  man  as  this  new  invader. 

Octavius,  cold  and  heartless  as  he  was,  would  not 
trust  himself  to  meet  the  super-woman;  which  was, 
perhaps,  the  highest  of  the  billion  tributes  that  were, 
soon  or  late,  paid  to  Cleopatra's  charms. 

Instead,  Octavius  sent  her  a  courteous  message,  as- 
suring her  of  his  respect  and  infinite  admiration,  and 
saying  that  he  would  see  that  she  was  treated  with 
every  consideration  due  her  rank.  To  his  friends, 
however,  he  loudly  boasted  that  she  should  walk  bare- 
foot through  Rome,  bound  by  gold  chains  to  his  chariot 
axle.  And  word  of  this  boast  came  to  Cleopatra. 
The  game  was  up. 

She  walled  herself  into  the  huge  Royal  Mausoleum 


154  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

and  had  word  sent  forth  that  she  was  dead.  Antony, 
himself  in  hiding  from  the  advancing  Romans,  heard 
and  believed.  Nothing  was  left.  He  had  blithely 
thrown  away  the  world  for  love.  And  now,  after  ten 
years  of  glorious  happiness,  the  woman  for  whom 
he  had  been  so  glad  to  sacrifice  everything,  was  dead. 

His  foes  were  hastening  to  seize  him.  There  was 
but  one  course  for  a  true  Roman  in  such  a  plight  to 
follow.  The  example  of  Brutus,  of  Cato,  of  a  hundred 
other  iron  patriots,  rose  before  him.  And  their  ex- 
ample Antony  followed. 

He  drove  his  sword  through  his  body  and  fell  dying, 
just  as  news  came  to  him  that  Celopatra  lived.  With 
almost  his  last  breath,  Antony  ordered  his  slaves  to 
carry  him  to  the  queen.  The  doors  and  lower  windows 
of  the  mausoleum  were  bricked  up.  There  was  no 
time  to  send  for  masons  to  break  an  opening  in  them, 
if  the  dying  man  would  reach  Cleopatra  alive.  So  he 
was  lifted  by  ropes  to  an  upper  window  of  the  tomb, 
and  was  then  swung  into  the  room  where  Cleopatra 
awaited  him. 

And  in  the  arms  of  the  woman  who  had  wrecked 
him,  and  who  at  the  last — though,  mercifully,  he  never 
knew  it — had  sought  to  betray  him,  Mark  Antony  died. 
Perhaps  it  was  an  ignoble  death,  and  an  anticlimax. 
Perhaps  it  was  a  fit  end  for  the  life  of  this  man,  who 
had  ever  been  the  adored  of  women;  and  the  death 
he  himself  would  have  chosen.  Fate  seldom  makes  a 
blunder  in  setting  her  scenes. 


CLEOPATRA  155 

So  perished  Mark  Antony;  to  whose  life  and  death, 
before  you  judge  him,  I  beg  you  to  apply  the  words  of 
a  country  preacher  I  once  heard.  The  preacher  was 
discanting  on  the  Biblical  personage  "out  of  whom 
were  cast  seven  devils.'* 

"Brethren,"  said  the  exhorter,  "a  man  must  be  far 
above  the  ordinary,  to  contain  seven  devils.  In  the 
average  man's  petty  nature  there  isn't  room  even  for 
a  single  half-size  devil,  to  say  nothing  of  seven  full- 
grown  ones." 

Cleopatra  had  long  since  made  up  her  mind  to  die 
sooner  than  walk  in  chains  through  the  streets  where 
once  she  had  swept  as  Caesar's  peerless  sweetheart. 
But  she  was  part  Greek  and  part  Egyptian — both  soft 
nations,  lacking  in  the  stern  qualities  of  Rome.  She 
had  no  taste  for  naked  steel.  She  was  content  to  die, 
but  she  wanted  to  die  without  pain. 

On  certain  of  her  slaves  she  practiced  the  effects  of 
various  Oriental  poisons.  Some  of  these  slaves  died 
in  agony,  some  in  mere  discomfort.  One  of  them  died 
with  a  smile  on  his  lips — a  slave  on  whom  had  been 
inflicted  the  bite  of  the  tiny  gray  Nile-mud  asp. 

Cleopatra's  question  was  answered.  She  put  an 
asp  to  her  breast.  The  serpent  fixed  its  fangs  in  her 
white  flesh. 

And  Cleopatra — model  and  synonym  for  a  worldful 
of  super-women — was  very  comfortably  spared  the 
shame  of  walking  chained  and  barefoot  in  a  Roman 
Triumph. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

GEORGE  SAND 

THE  HOPELESSLY  UGLY  SIREN 

A  VERY  famous  woman  discovered  once  that  men 
are  not  paragons  of  fidelity.  Or,  finding  that 
one  man  was  not,  she  decided  that  all  men  were 
alike.  And  to  Jules  Sandeau,  who  had  deceived  her, 
she  exclaimed,  in  fine,  melodrama  frenzy: 

"My  heart  is  a  grave!" 

"From  the  number  of  its  occupants,"  drawled  San- 
deau, "I  should  rather  call  it  a  cemetery.** 

The  woman,  too  angry  to  grasp  the  meaning  of  the 
ungallant  speech,  raged  on: 

"But  I  will  be  avenged.  I  shall  write  the  tragedy 
of  my  love — in  romance  form — and — ** 

"Why  not  in  city-directory  form?"  suggested  the 
man. 

And  the  loverly  conversation  ended  in  hysterics. 

The  woman  was  Amandine  Lucile  Aurore  Dupin 
Dudevant.  History,  literature,  and  the  annals  of  super* 
women  know  her  as  George  Sand. 


GEORGE    SAND  !>/ 

As  one  may  glean  from  her  verbal  tilt  with  Sandeau, 
she  was  not  a  recluse  or  a  misanthropist.  In  fact,  she 
numbered  her  ardent  wooers  by  the  dozen.  Her  love 
life  began  at  a  convent  school  when  she  was  little  more 
than  a  child,  and  it  endured  until  old  age  set  in.  Per- 
haps a  list  of  its  victims,  as  Sandeau  so  cruelly  hinted, 
would  have  resembled  a  city  directory.  It  certainly 
would  have  borne  a  striking  likeness  to  a  cyclopedic 
index  of  Europe's  nineteenth-century  celebrities;  for  it 
embraced  such  immortal  names  as  De  Musset,  Sandeau, 
Balzac,  Chopin,  Carlyle,  Prosper  Merimee,  Liszt, 
Dumas  and  many  another.  So  many  demigods 
knelt  at  her  shrine  that  at  last  she  wrote: 

I  am  sick  of  great  men.  I  would  far  rather  see  them  in 
Plutarch  than  in  real  life.  In  Plutarch  or  in  marble  or  in  bronze, 
their  human  side  would  not  disgust  me  so. 

And  the  personality,  the  appearance,  the  Venusberg 
charm  of  this  heart  monopolist?  One  instinctively 
pictures  a  svelte  form,  a  "face  that  launched  a  thou- 
sand ships,"  and  all  the  rest  of  the  sirenic  paraphernalia 
that  instinctively  attach  themselves  to  one's  mental 
vision  of  a  wholesale  fracturer  of  hearts.  Here  is 
Balzac's  description  of  her.  It  is  found  in  a  letter 
written  to  Madame  Hanska  in  1838,  when  George 
Sand  was  at  the  acme  of  her  super-woman  career: 

I  found  her  in  her  dressing  gown,  smoking  an  after-dinner 
cigar,  beside  the  fire  in  an  immense  room.  She  wore  very 


158  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

pretty  yellow  slippers  with  fringes,  coquettish  stockings,  and 
red  trousers.  Physically,  she  has  acquired  a  double  chin,  like 
a  well-fed  priest.  She  has  not  a  single  white  hair,  in  spite  of 
her  terrible  misfortunes.  Her  beautiful  eyes  are  as  sparkling 
as  ever. 

When  she  is  sunk  in  thought,  she  looks  just  as  stupid  as 
formerly — as  I  told  her —  for  her  expression  lies  wholly  in  her 
eyes.  She  goes  to  bed  at  six  in  the  morning  and  rises  at  noon. 
(I  go  to  bed  at  six  in  the  evening  and  rise  at  midnight;  but,  of 
course,  I  am  conforming  myself  to  her  habits.)  She  smokes 
to  excess  and  plays,  perhaps,  too  much  the  grande  dame. 

Carlyle,  still  less  merciful,  snarls  forth  the  following 
wholly  Carlylean  epitome  of  George  Sand's  looks: 

"She  has  the  face  of  a  horse!" 

Another  contemporary  writer  declares: 

"Her  hair  is  as  black  and  shiny  as  ebony;  her 
swarthy  face  is  red  and  heavy;  her  expression  fierce 
and  defiant,  yet  dull." 

So  much  for  the  verity  of  traditional  siren  dreams! 
So  much,  too,  for  the  theory  that  beauty  or  daintiness 
or  feminity  has  anything  to  do  with  the  nameless 
charm  of  the  world's  super-women. 

Geore  Sand  came,  honestly,  if  lefthandedly,  by  her 
cardiac  prowess.  For  she  was  a  great-great-grand- 
daughter of  Adrienne  Lecouvreur  and  Marshal  Saxe; 
two  of  history's  stellar  heart  breakers — a  fact  of  which 
she  made  much.  j 

Her  father  was  a  French  army  officer — Lieutenant 
Dupin— - and  as  a  mere  baby  his  only  daughter,  Aurore,' 
was  acclaimed  "daughter  of  the  regiment"  Decked 


GEORGE    SAND  159 

out  in  a  tiny  uniform,  the  ugly  duckling  ran  wild  in  the 
army  posts  where  her  father  -was  stationed,  and  joined 
right  boisterously  in  the  soldiers*  rough  sports. 

Later,  she  was  sent  to  a  convent.  From  her  own 
description  of  this  particular  retreat,  it  was  a  place 
that  crushed  out  all  normal  and  childish  ideas  and 
filled  the  growing  mind  with  a  morbid  melancholy. 
Yet  it  was  there  that  love  first  found  the  girl. 

The  victim — or  victor — was  one  Stephane  de  Grand- 
saigne,  professor  of  physiology.  Under  his  tuition 
she  developed  a  queer  craving  for  dissection — a  fad 
she  followed,  in  psychic  form,  through  life.  The  love 
scenes  between  herself  and  her  adored  professor  were 
usually  enacted  while  they  were  together  dissecting  a 
leg  or  an  arm  or  probing  the  mysteries  of  retina  and 
cornea. 

It  was  a  semigruesome,  unromantic  episode,  and  it 
ended  with  suddenness  when  the  pupil  was  sent  out 
into  the  world.  There  a  husband  was  found  for  her. 
He  was  Casimer  Dudevant,  a  man  she  liked  well 
enough  and  who  was  mildly  fond  of  her.  They  lived 
together  for  a  time  in  modified  content.  Two  children 
were  born  to  them. 

By  and  by,  Casimir  took  to  drink.  Many  people 
refused  to  blame  him.  Indeed,  there  are  present-day 
students  of  George  Sand's  life  who  can  find  a  host 
of  excuses  for  his  bibulous  failings.  But  once,  coming 
home  from  a  spree,  Casimir  forgot  to  take  his  wife's 
lofty  reproaches  with  his  wonted  good  nature. 


160  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER- WOMEN 

In  a  flash  of  drunken  anger,  he  struck  her.  And 
she  left  him. 

The  high  spirit  of  her  act  of  independence  is  marred 
just  a  little  by  the  fact  that  she  chanced  to  be  in  love 
with  another  man.  This  other  man  was  Aurelian  de 
Seze,  a  ponderous  country  magistrate.  The  affair  was 
brief.  Presently  the  two  had  parted.  And  George 
Sand,  penniless,  went  to  Paris  to  make  a  living  by 
literature. 

She  obtained  hack  work  of  a  sort,  lived  in  the  typical 
drafty  garret  so  dear  to  unrecognized  genius,  and 
earned  for  a  time  only  fifteen  francs — three  dollars — 
a  month.  It  was  the  customary  nadir,  wherein  one 
gathers  equipment  for  success. 

Then  she  met  Jules  Sandeau.  He  was  a  lawyer  who 
dabbled  in  literature.  He  fell  in  love  with  the  lonely 
woman  and  she  with  him.  They  formed  a  literary 
partnership.  Together  they  -wrote  novels  and  began 
to  achieve  a  certain  measure  of  good  luck.  Their 
novels  were  signed  "George  Sand."  Why.  no  one 
knows.  It  was  a  pen  name  devised  by  the  feminine 
member  of  the  novelistic  firm. 

But  before  long  Sandeau  was  left  far  behind  in  the 
race  for  fame.  His  more  or  less  fair  partner  wrote  a 
novel  on  her  own  account.  It  was  "Indiana."  Like 
Byron,  she  woke  one  morning  to  find  herself  famous. 
The  book  had  lifted  her  forever  out  of  obscurity  and 
need. 

At  about  the  same  period,  she  entered  Sandeau's 


GEORGE    SAND  J61. 

study  one  day  just  in  time  to  see  him  kiss  another 
•woman.  The  other  woman  chanced  to  be  their  laun- 
dress, who,  presumably,  was  more  kissable,  if  less  in- 
spiring, than  was  the  newly  acclaimed  celebrity  on 
whom  Sandeau  had  been  lavishing  his  fickle  affections. 

There  was  a  scene,  unequaled  for  violence  in  any 
of  their  joint  novels.  And  in  the  course  of  it  occurred 
the  repartee  recorded  at  the  beginning  of  this  story. 
As  an  upshot,  Sandeau  followed  Dudevant,  de  Seze, 
Grandsaigne,  and  the  rest  into  the  limbo  of  George 
Sand's  discarded  lovers;  where  he  was  soon  to  be 
joined  by  many  another  and  far  greater  man. 

Her  faith  in  men  shattered  for  at  lest  the  fourth 
time,  George  Sand  forswore  fidelity  and  resolved  to 
make  others  suffer;  even  as  she  liked  to  imagine  she 
herself  had  suffered.  The  literary  world  was  by  this 
time  cheering  itself  hoarse  over  her.  And  literary 
giants  were  vying  for  her  love. 

Out  of  the  swarm,  she  selected  Prosper  Merimee. 
The  author  of  "Carmen"  was  then  in  his  prime  as  a 
lion  of  the  salons.  To  him  George  Sand  gave  her 
heart  irrevocably  and  forever.  Through  youth  and 
maturity  they  worshiped  each  other — for  eight  con- 
secutive days.  On  the  ninth  day,  George  Sand  in- 
formed "Carmen's"  creator  that  he  was  far  too  cynical 
to  be  her  ideal  any  longer.  Merimee  retorted  that  her 
"pose  of  divine  exaltation"  was  better  suited  to  an 
angel  than  to  an  ugly  woman  who  continually  smoked 
cigars  and  who  swore  as  pyrotechnically  as  one  of  her 


162  STORIES     OF     THE     SUPER-WOMEN 

father's  most  loquacious  troopers.  So  the  romance 
ended. 

Followed  a  bevy  of  loves  well-nigh  as  brief,  most 
of  whose  heroes*  names  are  emblazoned  on  the  book 
backs  of  the  -world's  libraries.  And  after  this  populous 
interregnum,  came  Alfred  de  Musset. 

De  Musset  was  a  mere  boy.  But  his  wonderful 
poetry  had  already  awakened  Europe  to  ecstacy.  He 
was  the  beau-ideal  of  a  million  youthful  lovers  and 
their  sweethearts;  even  as,  a  generation  earlier,  Byron 
had  been. 

It  was  in  1833  that  he  and  George  Sand  met.  De 
Musset  had  seen  her  from  afar  and  had  begged  for 
an  introduction.  She  was  six  years  older  than  he,  and 
the  prettiest  girls  in  France  were  pleading  wistfully  for 
his  smile.  But,  at  sight,  he  loved  the  horse-faced, 
Almost  middle-aged  swearer  of  strange  oaths  and 
smoker  of  strong  cigars.  Hence  his  plea  to  be  intro- 
duced. 

Sainte-Beuve,  to  whom  he  made  the  request,  wrote, 
asking  leave  to  bring  him  to  one  of  George  Sand's  "at 
homes."  The  same  day  she  returned  a  most  positive 
refusal,  writing: 

I  do  not  want  you  to  introduce  De  Musset  to  me.  He  is  a 
fop,  and  we  would  not  suit  each  other.  Instead,  bring  Dumas; 
in  whose  art  I  have  found  a  soul,  if  only  the  soul  of  a  com- 
mercial traveler. 

But   de   Musset,    unrebuffed,   succeeded   in   his  am- 


GEORGE    SAND  163 

bition.  He  managed  to  secure  an  introduction  to  her 
at  a  banquet  given  by  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes 
editors.  And  almost  at  once  his  love  was  reciprocated. 
Then  began  a  union  that  was  alternately  the  interest, 
the  scandal,  and  the  laughing-stock  of  a  continent. 

Each  of  the  lovers  was  a  genius;  each  had  been 
pedestaled  by  the  world;  each  was  supposed  to  live 
on  a  rarified  plane  far  above  the  heads  or  the  ken  of 
mere  earth  folk.  The  love  affair  of  two  such  immortals 
might  reasonably  be  expected — was  expected — to  be 
akin  to  the  noble  romances  of  poetry. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  its  three-year  course  was  one 
long  series  of  babyish  spats,  of  ridiculous  scenes,  andi 
of  behavior  worthier  the  inmates  of  a  mad-house  or  a 
kindergarten  than  of  the  decade*s  two  master  intellects. 

George  Sand  expected  De  Musset  to  live  on  the 
heights  of  bloodless  idealism.  When  he  did  so,  she 
berated  him  as  heartless.  When  he  failed  to,  she  de- 
nounced him  as  an  animal.  She  was  never  content 
with  whatever  course  he  might  follow.  Yet  she  was 
madly  in  love  with  him. 

During  their  brief  separations,  she  avalanched  him 
with  letters;  some  furious,  some  imploring,  some  wild- 
ly affectionate,  some  drearily  commonplace.  Here  is 
an  extract  from  one,  displaying  a  fair  sample  of  her 
warmer  moods: 


It    is   nothing   to   you   to    have    tamed    the   pride    of    such    a 
woman  as  I,  and  to  have  stretched  me  a  suppliant  at  your  feet? 


164  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER- WOMEN 

It  is  nothing  to  you  that  I  am  dying  of  love? — torment  of  my 
life  that  you  are! 

In  the  course  of  the  cranky  affair  they  journeyed 
to  Italy.  There,  in  turn,  both  fell  ill.  And  there, 
through  the  medium  of  the  sick  room,  both  met  a 
handsome  young  Italian  doctor,  Pietro  Pagello.  Who, 
by  the  way,  was  still  living,  a  very  few  years  ago,  at 
the  age  of  ninety. 

Pagello's  dark  good  looks,  and  his  vivacity  tem- 
porarily swept  George  Sand's  heart  far  out  of  poor 
convalescent  de  Musset's  reach.  She  became  blindly 
infatuated  with  the  young  doctor.  De  Musset,  jealously 
sick  and  sickly  jealous,  was  quick  to  see  how  matters 
stood.  And  with  true  Gallic  sensationalism,  he  rose 
to  the  dramatic  occasion. 

First  he  swore  eternal  brotherhood  and  loyalty  to 
the  doctor — whom  he  scarcely  knew — and  then,  join- 
ing the  embarrassed  Pagello's  hand  to  George  Sand's, 
the  poet  tearfully  declaimed: 

"I  know  all.  You  love  each  other.  Take  him, 
Aurore,  as  the  parting  gift  of  a  lover  you  have  ceased 
to  love.  Take  her,  Pietro,  as  a  memento  of  your 
sworn  friend.  Adieu,  both  of  you — forever!" 

De  Musset  strode  strode  from  the  room  in  a  style 
that  would  have  evoked  an  applause  storm  from  even 
a  deaf-and-dumb  gallery.  He  left  Italy  and  came 
back  to  France.  There  he  loudly  bewailed  his  fate 
and  moaned  rhythmically  anent  the  false  flame  of 
woman's  love. 


GEORGE    SAND  165 

Meanwhile,  George  Sand  found  to  her  surprise  that 
she  loved  the  dramatic  de  Musset  far  more  than  she 
loved  Pagello.  She  followed  de  Musset  to  Paris, 
bringing  Pagello  along  for  good  measure. 

When  she  had  gone  to  Italy  with  de  Musset,  Paris 
had  gasped.  Even  the  usual  latitude  allowed  to 
geniuses  had  been  perilously  stretched.  When  de 
Musset  had  returned,  Orpheuslike,  weeping  all  over 
the  strings  of  his  lyre,  Paris  had  wept  with  him.  But 
now  that  the  heroine  of  the  escapade  followed  in  full 
chase  of  the  discarded  one,  dragging  his  successor  in 
her  wake,  Paris  howled  with  inextinguishable  laughter. 

De  Musset,  poetically  sensitive  to  every  change  of 
opinion,  refused  to  make  himself  ridiculous.  While 
renewing  his  vow  of  brotherly  friendship  for  Pagello, 
he  utterly  refused  to  see  George  Sand,  or  to  answer 
one  of  her  thousand  beseeching  letters. 

Pagello,  too,  began  to  feel  supremely  uncomfortable 
in  his  thankless  role  of  excess  baggage.  He  squirmed 
nervously  in  search  of  a  door  of  escape.  He  quickly 
found  one. 

"Monsieur  de  Musset  must  hate  me  for  what  I  have 
done,"  he  announced  to  all  who  would  stop  laughing 
long  enough  to  listen  to  him.  "He  has  probably  sworn 
a  blood  feud  against  me.  I  will  not  remain  here  to 
become  the  victim  of  a  vendetta." 

And  he  fled  incontinently  to  his  native  Italy,  leaving 
George  Sand  alone  to  face  the  now  redoubled  spasms 
of  public  mirth. 


166  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

Tragically  humorless,  deaf  to  snicker  and  guffaw, 
she  set  herself  to  the  tedious  task  of  winning  back  de 
Musset.  When  letters  were  of  no  avail,  she  sought  to 
waylay  him  in  the  street  or  elsewhere.  Forewarned, 
he  kept  to  his  rooms. 

Then  she  stationed  herself  on  his  doorstep  and  wept 
there,  like  a  modern  and  uglier  Niobe,  for  all  to  see 
De  Musset  kept  still  closer  hidden  from  view. 

In  desperation,  the  unhappy  woman  resolved  to 
follow  the  historic  example  of  Ninon  de  Lenclos  in  re- 
claiming an  errant  lover.  She  cut  off  her  heavy  black 
hair — her  one  beauty — and  sent  it  by  messenger  to  the 
coy  de  Musset. 

The  sacrifice  was  vain.  Perhaps  the  beauty-loving 
poet,  remembering  how  homely  she  had  looked,  even 
with  her  luxuriant  hair,  drew  a  vivid  mind  picture  of 
what  she  must  look  like  without  it.  At  all  events,  he 
made  no  sign  of  forgiveness. 

One  day,  de  Musset,  coming  unguardedly  out  of  his 
apartment,  collided  on  the  stairs  with  the  weeping 
woman.  There  was  a  partial  and  very  temporary  re- 
conciliation, followed  soon  by  a  permanent  break. 

George  Sand,  tingling  with  hurt  pride,  proceeded  to 
write  a  novel,  wherein,  under  a  painfully  thin  and 
openwork  veil,  she  told  the  story  of  her  love  affair 
with  de  Musset.  It  is  waste  of  space  to  add  that  she 
told  it  from  her  own  angle,  depicting  herself  as  a 
gentle,  too-loving  martyr,  and  painting  de  Musset  as 
a  false,  affected,  ludicrously  worthless  personage. 


GEORGE    SAND  167 

The  novel  set  Paris  to  jabbering  as  noisily  as  it  had 
just  laughed.  De  Musset  was  regarded  as  a  monster, 
a  monument  of  duplicity,  and  his  former  sweetheart 
as  a  patient  saint.  But  the  poet  was  not  long  in  pre- 
paring a  counterblast. 

Promptly  he  threw  into  the  arena  a  book  in  which, 
under  still  thinner  disguise,  he  gave  his  own  version  of 
the  story.  In  this  volume  de  Musset  was  a  trusting 
lover,  and  George  Sand  a  viper. 

There  were  further  recriminations,  in  print  and  out 
of  it.  Literary  Paris  was  divided  into  two  camps.  Be- 
tween the  pro-Mussets  and  the  pro-Sands,  the  war 
raged  merrily.  Swinburne  crystalized  the  case  in  a 
deathless  epigram: 

"De  Musset  was  wrong;  but  George  did  not  behave 
as  a  gentleman  should." 

For  a  time,  George  Sand  turned  to  her  work  for 
oblivion.  She  wrote  eight  hours  a  day.  Her  novels 
were  among  the  foremost  of  the  century.  She  was 
France's  best-known  woman.  The  men  who  had 
loved  her  served  now  as  characters  for  her  books,  as 
had  de  Musset.  Mercilessly  she  dissected  them — 
memories  of  the  physiology  professorl — and  held  up 
to  scorn  their  faults,  their  frailties,  their  crass  human- 
ness.  There  was  gnashing  of  teeth.  There  was  recog- 
nition— wholesale.  There  was  protest.  There  were 
legions  of  threats  to  prosecute.  Said  merry  old  Abbe 
Liszt — himself  a  heart  conqueror  of  renown: 

"Each   of   your   admirers,    madame,    is   a  tmtterfly 


168  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER- WOMEN 

which  you  lure  to  you  by  honey,  impale  upon  the  pin 
of  jealously  or  boredom,  and  finally  vivisect  in  a 
novel." 

After  a  mere  breathing  space  came  what  was 
probably  the  grand  passion  of  George  Sand's  ultra- 
passionate  life;  a  romance  with  none  of  the  ironic 
humor  that  lighted  her  affair  with  De  Musset. 

The  hero — victim — what  you  will — was  Frederic 
Chopin;  too-fiery  soul  in  too-fragile  body.  Genius, 
wonder  musician,  dreamer,  the  man  had  always  been 
tossed  on  misfortune's  waters,  hammered  by  them  till 
his  mighty  soul  had  well-nigh  torn  free  from  the  fail- 
ing flesh.  And  at  this  period,  of  all  others,  fate  threw 
him  into  the  life  of  George  Sand. 

He  was  slender,  weak,  almost  effeminate  in  his 
unHeshliness.  She  was  brutally  robust,  mannish,  ag- 
gressive; his  exact  opposite-  And  they  loved — loved 
more  deeply,  more  all -absorbingly  than  either  had 
loved  before  in  a  mutually  long  era  of  heart  destroy- 
ing. In  fact,  George  Sand  loved  Chopin  as  she  loved 
nothing  else  on  earth — with  the  sole  exception  of  her 
idolized  self. 

The  hand  of  death  was  already  on  Chopin  when  he 
and  George  Sand  met.  This  supervital  woman  seemed 
to  breathe  into  him  some  of  her  own  tireless  vitality. 
His  health  rallied.  It  was  said  by  fanciful  acquaintance? 
that  George  Sand's  life  was  keeping  life  in  her  lover. 
She  heard  and  was  glad,  and  hastened  to  procalim 
the  wonder  to  her  friends,  adding  thereby  a  leaf  to  her 


GEORGE    SAND  169 

martyr  crown.  By  sheer  will  power  and  excess  vital 
force  she  actually  buoyed  up  her  frail  lover's  sinking 
strength  and  gave  him  a  new  lease  of  living. 

This  did  not  prevent  her  from  quarreling  fiercely  and 
frequently  with  him — as  she  always  did  with  every 
man  or  woman  who  came  into  personal  acquaintance 
with  her. 

Chopin  begged  her  to  marry  him.  She  refused. 
One  venture  in  matrimony  had  sufficed  her.  Not  even 
to  make  happy  the  man  she  loved  would  she  essay 
a  second  trial  of  wedlock. 

In  her  first  onrush  of  devotion  for  Chopin  she  could 
not  blind  herself  to  the  fact  that,  even  as  she  had  tired 
of  others,  so  she  might  one  day  tire  of  him.  And 
divorces  in  France,  were  not  easy  to  get.  Hence,  the 
dying  Chopin's  supreme  wish  went  ungratified;  as  had 
many  a  lesser  wish  during  his  affair  with  her. 

The  sick  composer  had  known  many  loves.  Yet 
from  the  hour  he  met  George  Sand  he  seems  to  have 
been  steadfast  to  that  single  devotion.  It  is  not  on 
record  that  he  so  much  as  aroused  her  ever-wakeful 
jealousy.  And  he  is  probably  the  only  man  of  her 
love-starred  career  who  did  not — which  is  odd,  in 
view  of  this  assertion  by  one  of  Chopin's  biographers: 

He  found  himself  unable  to  avoid  accepting  some  of  the 
numberless  hearts  that  were  flung  like  roses  at  his  feet.  He 
could  modulate  from  one  love  affair  to  another  as  fleetly  and 
as  gracefully  as  from  one  key  to  its  remote  neighbor. 


170  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

Here,  too,  is  the  account  given  by  a  later  chronicler 
of  the  composer's  meeting  with  George  Sand: 

One  evening,  as  he  was  entering  a  house  where  a  literary  re- 
ception was  in  progress,  Chopin  fancied  he  was  pursued  by  a 
violet-scented  phantom.  In  superstitious  fear,  he  would  have 
left  the  house  at  once,  but  friends  who  were  with  him  laughed 
away  his  dread  and  described  the  phenomenon  as  the  fancy  of 
a  sick  man's  brain. 

He  entered  the  crowded  salon  and  was  forthwith  presented 

to  the  guest  of  honor,  a  swarthy  and  strange-looking  woman 

the  premiere  novelist,  Madame  Dudevant — George  Sand. 

In  his  diary  that  same  night  Chopin  wrote  of  his 
new  acquaintance: 

I  do  not  like  her  face.  There  is  something  in  it  that  repels  me. 

Yet  within  a  day  or  so  he  was  her  adorer. 

For  a  time  all  went  as  well  as  any  love  story  could 
with  such  a  heroine.  She  gloried  in  hev  power  to 
build  up  for  the  moment  her  lover's  waning  strength. 
Her  friends*  praise  of  the  feat  was  as  music  to  her. 
But  she  was  not  the  type  of  woman  who  can  forever 
wait  patiently  upon  a  fretful  convalescent's  -whims. 
Her  self-sacrifice  was  a  flash,  not  a  steady  flame. 

And  in  time  she  girded  at  the  restraints  of  playing 
nurse  and  vitality  giver.  Then,  instead  of  boasting  as 
before,  she  waxed  complaining.  She  told  the  world 
at  large  how  exacting  and  cross  and  tiresome  Chopin 
was. 

She  once  referred  to  him  publicly  as  "that  detest- 
able invalid."  She  announced  that  she  was  his  ever- 


GEORGE    SAND  171 

patient  comrade  and  nurse.  There  is  no  authority  but 
hers  to  bear  out  the  claim  of  patience.  And  so  the 
once-beautiful  relationship  dragged  out  its  weary 
length  until  George  Sand  could  endure  the  strain  no 
longer. 

She  deserted  Chopin. 

Not  content  with  this  final  blow  to  the  invalid  who 
had  loved  her  for  years,  she  continued  to  vilify  him. 
Among  her  complaints  was  one  that  has  since  passed, 
in  slightly  altered  form,  into  a  good  old  reliable  vaude- 
ville wheeze.  She  wrote: 

We  never  addressed  a  single  reproach  to  each  other  except 
once.  And  that  was  from  the  first  to  the  last  time  we  met. 

George  Sand's  desertion  was  Chopin's  deathblow. 
He  never  rallied  from  it.  He  tried  to  mask  his  heart- 
break by  going  about  as  before  and  appearing  often 
in  public.  But  even  this  was  soon  denied  to  him — 
not  only  by  collapsed  health,  but  from  the  danger  of 
meeting  his  former  divinity  at  the  houses  he  chanced 
to  visit  or  on  the  streets.  One  such  lesson  was  enough 
for  him.  It  was  in  a  friend's  crowded  drawing-room. 
A  historian  describes  the  encounter: 

Thinking  herself  unobserved,  George  Sand  walked  up  to 
Chopin  and  held  out  her  hand. 

"Frederic!"  she  murmured,  in  a  voice  audible  to  him  alone. 

He  saw  her  familiar  form  standing  before  him.  She  was 
repentant,  subdued,  and  seeking  reconciliation.  His  handsome 
face  grew  deadly  pale,  and  without  a  word  he  left  the  room. 


172  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER- WOMEN 

The  end  came  soon  afterward.  Chopin's  mortal  ill- 
ness struck  him  down.  Dying,  he  sent  for  his  lost 
love.  Perhaps  the  message  never  reached  her;  perhaps 
she  thought  it  a  trick — she  had  tried  something  of  the 
sort  on  de  Musset;  perhaps  she  did  not  realize  that 
the  time  was  so  short. 

At  all  events,  she  paid  no  heed  to  the  frantic  appeal 
that  she  come  at  once  to  the  dying  composer. 

Hour  after  hour,  Chopin  waited  for  her,  his  ears 
strained  for  the  sound  of  her  heavy  tread.  At  last 
he  grew  to  realize  that  she  would  not  obey  the  sum- 
mons, that  he  would  never  again  see  her. 

As  hope  fled,  Chopin  broke  down  and  cried 
piteously. 

"She  promised  I  should  die  in  no  arms  but  hers!" 
he  sobbed  over  and  over. 

And  that  night  he  died — no  less  than  seven  different 
women  claiming  later  to  have  taken  his  recreant  sweet- 
heart's place  at  his  deathbed. 

George  Sand  was  conscience-stricken.  She  wrote 
and  proclaimed  long  and  more  or  less  plausible  reasons 
to  account  for  her  failure  to  go  to  Chopin.  But  no  one 
who  really  knew  her  was  convinced  of  her  excuses' 
truth.  And  so  ended  one  more  of  her  heart  stories. 

De  Musset,  by  the  way  refused  to  admit  her  to  his 
rooms  when  he  himself  lay  dying— a  grisly  joke  that 
Paris  appreciated. 

Back  to  her  work,  as  once  before,  George  Sand  fled 
for  forgetfulness.  And  her  fame  grew.  She  was  the 


GEORGE    SAND  173 

most  prolific  woman  writer,  by  the  way,  in  literature's 
history;  writing,  in  all,  twenty  plays  and  more  than 
one  hundred  novels. 

An  Englishman  (name  buried)  courted  her  at 
about  this  time.  Still  miserable  over  Chopin's  death 
— and  far  more  so  over  the  way  people  were  talking 
about  her  treatment  of  him — she  was  decidedly  waspish 
to  the  trans-Channel  admirer.  Seeking  to  win  her 
interest,  in  a  literary  dicussion,  he  opened  one  con- 
versation by  inquiring: 

"Madame  Dudevant,  what  is  your  favorite  novel?** 

"Olympia,'  **  she  answered,  without  a  second  of 
hesitance. 

'Olympia?*  '  the  Englishman  repeated,  vainly 
ransacking  his  memory.  "I  don't  think  I  recall  any 
book  of  that  name." 

"Of  course  you  don't,'*  she  snapped.  "I  haven't 
written  it  yet." 

And  perhaps — or  perhaps  not — his  British  brain 
some  day  unraveled  the  meaning  of  cryptic  retort. 

For  her  infidelities  George  Sand  felt  no  compunc- 
tion. She  wrote  frankly  concerning  them: 

I  have  never  imposed  constancy  upon  myself.  When  I  have 
felt  that  love  is  dead,  I  have  said  so  without  shame  or  remorse, 
and  have  obeyed  Providence  that  was  leading  me  elsewhere. 

By  her  marriage  with  Dudevant,  she  had  had  a  son 
and  a  daughter.  The  daughter,  Solange,  inherited 
much  of  her  mother's  lawlessness,  with  none  of  the 


174  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

latter's  inspiration.  And  now  George  Sand  was  to  see 
how  her  own  nature  worked  in  another  of  the  same 
blood. 

She  arranged  a  splendid  marriage  for  Solange,  a 
marriage  "with  a  man  of  rank  and  money.  And  on  the 
very  eve  of  the  wedding  Solange  proceeded  to  elope 
with  a  poor  sculptor,  Clesinger  by  name. 

The  mother  was  equal  to  the  emergency.  She  ran 
after  the  fugitives,  caught  them,  bullied  Clesinger  into 
marrying  Solange,  hushed  all  scandal,  and  installed  the 
young  couple  in  a  Paris  flat,  settling  on  them  the  bulk 
of  her  property.  In  revenge,  Clesinger  permanently 
estranged  Solange  from  her  mother. 

Soon  afterward  George  Sand's  sway  over  men's 
hearts  ceased.  Whether  she  was  weary  of  love,  or 
whether  love  was  weary  of  her,  the  old  fascination 
deserted  her.  No  more  as  lovers,  but  as  profound  ad- 
mirers of  her  intellect,  great  men  still  flocked  about 
her — Matthew  Arnold,  Flaubert,  Feuillet,  and  a  host 
of  others.  But  it  was  now  her  brain  alone  they  wor- 
shiped. 

By  many  years  George  Sand  outlived  her  charm, 
dying  in  1876  at  the  age  of  seventy-two,  her  grand- 
children about  her — a  smugly  proper,  if  sadly  anticli- 
macteric,  ending  to  a  career  in  which  anticlimax  had 
been  almost  as  infrequent  as  propriety. 


CHAPTER  NINE. 

MADAME  DU   BARRY 

THE  SEVEN-MILLION-DOLLAR  SIREN. 

SHE  came  from  the  same  neighborhood  that  had 
produced  Joan  of  Arc.  She  even  claimed  rela- 
tionship to  the  long-dead  Maid.  But  at  that  point 
all  likeness  between  the  two  comes  to  a  very  abrupt 
end. 

She  is  known  to  history  as  "Marie  Jeanne  Gomard 
de  Vaubernier,  Comtesse  du  Barry."  The  parish  reg- 
ister of  her  birthplace  describes  her,  less  flamboyantly, 
as  "Marie  Jeanne,  natural  daughter  of  Anne  Becu, 
known  as  Quantigny;  born  Aug.,  A.  D.  1  746." 

There  are  many  details  in  Marie  Jeanne  du  Barry's 
story  that  I  am  going  to  omit — at  my  own  request;  not 
only  because  they  are  unwriteable,  but  because  their 
sordid  vulgarity  is  also  drearily  stupid.  I  apologize  in 
advance  for  the  omissions.  But  even  after  the  pro- 
cess of  weeding  out,  I  think  there  will  be  quite  enough 
left  to  hold  the  interest. 

When  Marie  was  six,  Anne  Becu  drifted  to  Paris — 


176  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

the  Mecca  of  her  trade.  And  soon  afterward,  an  ad- 
mirer of  Anne's,  one  Dumonceau,  was  coaxed  into  lav- 
ishing two  dollars  and  forty  cents  a  month  on  Marie's 
education.  Dumonceau  had  been  one  of  Anne's 
wooers  in  the  village  days,  and  it  has  been  suggested 
that  his  interest  in  little  Marie  was  prompted  by  more 
than  mere  kindness — in  fact,  that  he  and  the  infant 
•were  "more  than  kin  and  less  than  kind." 

In  any  case,  the  monthly  two  dollars  and  forty  cents 
paid  Marie's  expenses  in  a  convent  school,  where  she 
spent  the  next  ten  years.  This  Sainte-Aurore  convent, 
in  the  Rue  Neuve  Sainte-Genevieve,  was  a  philan- 
thropic refuge  "for  all  young  persons  of  honest  parent- 
age who  are  in  circumstances  where  they  run  the  risk 
of  ruin." 

The  rules  of  the  Sainte-Aurore  were  far  stricter  and 
icier  than  those  of  the  most  investigatable  of  modern 
orphanages.  Among  the  punishments  inflicted  on 
these  little  wards  of  God  were  starvation,  beatings,  and 
imprisonment  in  cold  and  stone-floored  dark  cells — 
for  the  very  mildest  transgressions. 

Three  dire  sins,  calling  always  for  instant  retribution, 
were:  "To  laugh,  to  sing,  and  to  speak  above  a  whis- 
per." For  such  hideous  and  unnatural  crimes  as 
laughter,  song,  and  ordinary  speech,  these  poor  love- 
less babies  were  treated  like  the  vilest  criminals.  One 
hopes,  morbidly,  that  the  theologians  who  abolished 
Hell  left  at  least  one  warm  corner  of  it  in  commission, 
for  the  framers  and  enforcers  of  those  gentle  rules. 


MADAME     DU     BARRY  177 

All  the  foregoing  is  not  sentimental  mush,  but  is 
mentioned  to  show  how  dire  must  have  been  a  pupil's 
sin  that  the  convent  authorities  could  not  cope 
with. 

And  such  a  sin — no  one  knows  what  it  was — Marie 
committed  when  she  was  sixteen.  For  which  she  was 
expelled  in  black  disgrace  from  her  happy  childhood 
home  at  Sainte-Aurore,  and  turned  loose  upon  the 
world. 

Her  mother's  loving  arms  were  open,  ready  to  re- 
ceive and  succor  the  disgraced  girl,  and  to  start  her 
afresh  in  life — as  only  a  mother  can.  So,  to  keep 
Marie  from  feeling  unduly  dependent  upon  a  poor 
working  woman  like  herself,  she  taught  her  her  own. 
trade — the  oldest  on  earth. 

With  a  little  basket  of  cheap  jewelry — which  served 
the  same  purpose  as  a  present-day  beggar's  stock  of 
lead  pencils — Marie  went  the  rounds  of  the  streets. 
Her  career  was  cut  out  for  her  by  her  mother's  fond 
forethought.  And  in  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine 
cases  out  of  a  thousand,  a  girl  thus  launched  would 
have  ended  in  the  gutter.  But  Marie  was  the  thou- 
sandth woman — a  true  super-woman,  in  every  sense 
of  the  word.  The  filth  of  the  streets  could  not  smirch 
her — outwardly.  And  luck  was  waiting  around  the 
corner  for  her. 

A  rich  and  eccentric  old  woman  of  fashion — 
Madame  Legrade — had  a  craze  for  amateur  theatricals. 
Catching  sight  of  Marie  one  day,  she  was  struck  by 


178  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

the  girl's  beauty,  and  hired  her,  partly  as  a  companion 
and  partly  as  a  comedian  for  her  private  theatre. 

At  Madame  Legrade's,  Marie  got  her  first  view  of 
semidecent  society.  And,  being  adaptable,  she  picked 
up  a  smatttering  of  manners  and  of  grammatical 
speech;  only  a  smattering,  but  all  she  cared  to  acquire. 
There,  too,  she  met  such  men  as  the  withered  old  wit, 
de  Richelieu,  and  the  Prince  de  Soubise;  and  the  Due 
de  Brissac,  whose  son  was  one  day  to  be  the  one  real 
love  of  her  life.  Here,  too,  she  met  a  genius  whom  she 
describes  in  her  "Memoirs"  as  "a  cunning  fox;  witty 
.  .  .  very  ugly  and  very  thin."  He  was  Grimm,  the 
fairytale  man. 

Marie  was  in  clover.  But  the  fortune  was  too  good 
to  last.  And  because  a  far  more  glittering  fortune  was 
awaiting  her  just  around  the  corner,  Destiny  soon  jog- 
gled the  girl  out  of  her  snug  berth.  Madame  Legrade 
had  two  sons.  Both  of  them  fell  crazily  in  love  with 
Marie.  It  is  not  on  record  that  she  told  them  she  would 
rather  be  the  poor  working  girl  that  she  was.  And 
Madame  Legrade,  in  horror,  ordered  her  out  of  the 
house. 

Back  to  her  dear,  old  loving  mother,  as  before,  went 
Marie.  And  once  more  mother  love  came  to  the  res- 
cue. Anne  Becu  had  recently  married  a  lackey  of 
some  great  house.  She  was  now  "Madame  Racon." 
Marie  adopted  her  stepfather's  name — the  first  to 
which  she  had  ever  possessed  even  a  semilegal  claim — 
and  permitted  her  mother  to  get  her  a  job  in  the  mil- 


MADAME     DU     BARRY  179 

linery  shop  of  Madame  Labille.  This  shop  was  of  a 
sort  extremely  common  in  that  day.  It  sold  not  only 
hats  for  woman,  but  sword  knots  and  shoe  buckles  for 
men.  It  employed  only  girls  of  extreme  beauty.  And 
it  was  a  favorite  louging  place  for  men  about  town. 
Altogether,  there  was  no  startling  change  in  Marie's 
vocation  from  the  era  when  she  had  hawked  artificial 
jewelry. 

Her  presence  drew  scores  of  young  dandies  to  the 
shop.  And  she  might  readily  have  had  her  pick  of  the 
lot.  But  during  a  momentary  weakness  of  intellect, 
she  plunged  into  a  love  affair  with  a  handsome  young 
pastry  cook,  Nicolas  Mothon.  The  other  and  more 
ambitious  girls  guyed  her  right  unmercifully  for  her 
plebeian  tastes.  But  it  was  terribly  serious  with  Marie. 
Mathon  was  the  first  man  to  whom  she  had  lost  her 
heart.  Many  years  later  she  wrote: 

When  I  call  to  memory  all  the  men  who  have  adored  me, 
I  must  say  it  was  not  poor  Nicolas  who  pleased  me  least.  For  I, 
too,  have  known  what  first  love  can  mean. 

But  she  forgot  what  "first  love  can  mean"  as  readily 
as  she  had  learned  it.  For  soon  she  threw  over  Nicolas 
for  a  man  of  wealth,  named  De  la  Vauvenardiere ;  and 
she  abandoned  the  latter  for  a  suitor  named  Duval; 
and  ousted  Duval  from  her  affection  for  Lamet,  the 
court  hairdresser. 

No,  in  choosing  Lamet,  she  was  not  lowering  her 
standard.  A  court  hairdresser  was  far  more  than  a 


180  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

mere  barber.  He  was  a  functionary  of  vast  impor- 
tance, the  confidant  of  the  great,  the  counselor  of  the 
unwary,  a  man  of  substance  and  position,  the  only 
tradesman  in  all  France  who  was  permitted  by  court 
edict  to  wear  a  sword. 

Marie  was  envied  as  Lamet's  sweetheart;  until  he 
went  broke,  overnight,  and  had  to  flee  to  England  to 
dodge  a  debtor's  cell. 

Then  came  the  Cosse  incident;  at  least,  then  it  be- 
gan. Cosse — or  Louis  Hercule  Timoleon  de  Cosse- 
Brissac — was  the  Due  de  Brissac's  son.  He  met  Marie 
in  the  street  one  day,  so  runs  the  story,  followed  her  to 
the  shop,  and  there,  under  the  pretext  of  buying  a 
sword  knot,  fell  into  talk  with  her.  He  loved  her  at 
first  sight,  and  she  loved  him.  Theirs  was  not  such  a 
love  as  either  had  hitherto  known.  It  was  the  genuine 
article. 

Cosse  was  young  and  good  looking  and  afflicted  with 
republican  ideas.  He  did  not  see  in  Marie  the  vender 
of  cheap  jewelry  and  cheaper  affections,  nor  the  girl 
who  used  her  millinery  job  as  a  mask.  To  him,  she  was 
an  angel.  And — so  far  as  concerned  him — she  was. 

They  were  young,  and  they  dreamed.  Cosse  was 
unlike  any  man  Marie  had  known.  His  love  was  utter- 
ly unlike  any  love  she  had  known  or  heard  of.  Alto- 
gether, it  was  a  pretty  little  romance,  on  both  sides. 
And  if  we  smile  at  it,  let  the  smile  be  kindly,  with 
nothing  of  the  leer  about  it.  For  there  was  nothing 
to  provoke  a  leer — at  least,  not  then. 


MADAME     DU     BARRY  181 

This  Cosse  affair's  early  stages  are  so  intertangled 
with  romance,  legend,  court  rumor,  and  later  inven- 
toins,  that  I  hasten  to  forstall  corrections,  from  readers 
wiser  than  I,  by  confessing  that  all  I  know  of  it,  or  can 
learn  from  supposedly  reliable  sources,  is  that  Marie 
and  Cosse  parted  somewhat  suddenly;  and  the  causes 
variously  given  are  that  his  father  put  a  stop  to  the 
romance  and  that  Cosse  learned  something  of  Marie's 
real  character.  It  is  gravely  declared  that  he  wanted 
to  marry  her,  and  that  his  indignant  ducal  parent  not 
only  opened  his  eyes  to  the  bride  elect's  past,  but 
threatened  to  throw  Cosse  into  the  Bastile  by  means  of 
a  lettre  de  cachet.  As  I  said,  I  vouch  for  none  of  these 
reasons  for  the  break  between  the  two  lovers.  It  is 
all  surmise.  But  what  follows  is  not. 

The  next  man  to  lose  his  head  and  heart  to  Marie 
was  a  young  nobleman  whose  repute  may  be  guessed 
from  the  fact  that — even  in  dissolute  eighteenth-century 
Paris — he  was  known,  not  as  a  roue,  but  as  "The 
Roue."  He  had  come  to  Paris  a  few  years  earlier,  leav- 
ing a  wife  somewhere  on  the  -way. 

He  had  squandered  his  patrimoney  en  route,  and 
reached  the  capital  penniless.  But  he  quickly  caught 
the  fancy  of  Madame  Malouse,  who  had  influence  at 
court.  She  arranged  that  he  should  have  practically 
the  sole  monopoly  of  supplying  the  French  navy  with 
all  its  various  forms  of  merchandise.  This  meant  fat 
profits,  and  he  fattened  them  still  further  by  running  a 
select  gambling  house. 


182  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

He  was  Jean,  Vicomte  du  Barry. 

Jean  met  and  fell  victim  to  Marie.  Realizing  what  a 
cash  attraction  her  beauty  and  charm  could  be  made, 
he  installed  her  as  presiding  genius  of  his  gambling 
house,  as  a  lure  to  draw  youthful  nobles  to  the  place. 
Marie — or  Madame  Lange,  as,  for  no  known  reason, 
she  had  begun  to  call  herself — was  the  bright  star  at 
the  Chance  Goddess*  shine.  And  the  money  poured 
fast  into  the  crooked  games  whereby  the  house  made 
Jean  rich. 

For  a  time  there  was  wholesale  prosperity  all 
around,  with  plenty  more  of  it  to  come.  Before  I  go 
on,  may  I  quote  a  contemporary  writer's  word  picture 
of  Marie,  as  she  appeared  at  this  time? 

Her  hair  i»  long,  silky,  curling  like  a  child's,  and  blond  with 
a  natural  ash  tint.  .  .  .  Her  eyebrows  and  lashes  are  dark 
and  curly.  Behind  them  the  blue  eyes,  which  one  seldom  sees 
quite  open,  look  out  with  coquettish,  sidelong  glances.  ... 
Her  nose  is  small  and  finely  cut,  and  her  mouth  is  a  perfect 
cupid's  bow.  .  .  .  Her  neck,  her  arms,  and  her  feet  and 
hands  remind  one  of  ancient  Greek  statuary;  while  her  com- 
plexion is  that  of  a  rose  leaf  steeped  in  milk.  .  .  .  She 
carries  with  her  a  delicious  atmosphere  of  intoxication,  victori- 
ous, amorous  youth. 

Voltaire  once  exclaimed,  before  a  portrait  of  her: 
"The  original  was  made  for  the  gods!" 
Even  as  the  cherry  tree  was  posthumously  invented 
for  Washington  and,  perhaps,  the  apple  for  William 


MADAME     DU     BARRY  183 

Tell  and  the  egg  for  Columbus,  so  around  Marie  in 
after  years  sprang  up  countless  tales  of  her  youth. 
Some  may  have  been  true.  Some  were  palpable  lies. 
To  which  does  the  ensuing  anecdote  belong? 

In  the  spring  of  1  768,  during  her  sojourn  as  "come- 
on"  for  the  du  Barry  gambling  hell,  Marie  noticed, 
three  days  in  succession,  that  she  was  closely  followed 
on  the  street  by  "a  young  man  of  a  sober  cast  of 
countenance  and  elegant  attire.**  Now,  to  be  followed 
was  no  novelty  to  Marie.  And  more  than  one  man 
of  "elegant  attire"  had  sued  in  vain  for  her  favor.  Yet 
this  youth  made  no  advances.  He  simply  followed 
her  wherever  she  went.  And  in  his  absence  his  face 
haunted  her  strangely.  So,  on  the  fourth  day,  as  she 
turned  suddenly  in  the  street  and  saw  him  close  behind 
her,  she  asked,  with  affected  indignation: 

"What  do  you  want  of  me?" 

The  man  bowed  low,  with  no  shadow  of  hesitancy, 
made  this  cryptic  answer  to  her  query: 

"Mademoiselle,  will  you  grant  me  the  first  reason- 
able request  I  may  make  of  you  when  you  are  Queen 
of  France?" 

Thinking  he  was  a  crank — as  perhaps  he  was — she 
sought  to  humor  him,  and  replied: 

"Certainly,  monsieur.      I  promise." 

"You  take  me  for  a  madman,"  he  returned,  with  a 
second  grave  bow.  "But  I  am  not  insane.  Adieu, 
mademoiselle.  There  will  be  nothing  more  extraord- 
inary than  your  elevation— except  your  end." 


184  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER- WOMEN 

He  spoke  and  vanished,  either  into  the  street  crowd 
or  into  thin  air. 

You  may  recall  the  story  of  the  "Man  in  Black's" 
midnight  visit  to  Ninon  de  1'Enclos,  with  a  gift  to  the 
essence  of  youth  and  the  warning  of  her  death?  This 
was  a  well-believed  and  oft-repeated  narrative  in 
Marie's  day.  It  is  highly  possible  that  she  built  from  it 
her  recital  of  the  adventure  of  the  "elegantly  attired" 
stranger. 

At  all  events,  she  told  Jean  du  Barry  about  it. 
Whether  or  not  he  believed  it,  is  no  concern  of  yours  or 
mine.  But  it  assuredly  gave  him  an  idea;  the  supreme 
idea  of  his  rotten  life.  He  saw  a  one-in-fifty  chance  of 
making  more  money  through  Marie  than  she  could 
have  earned  for  him  in  a  century  as  divinity  of  his 
gambling  rooms.  And,  remote  as  were  the  scheme's 
prospects  for  success,  he  resolved  to  make  a  gambler's 
cast  at  the  venture. 

Louis  XV.,  King  of  France,  had  been  ruled  for 
nearly  twenty  years  by  the  Marquise  de  Pompadour, 
who  had  squandered  royal  revenues,  had  made  and 
unmade  men's  career  by  a  nod  or  a  shake  of  her  pretty 
head,  and  had  played  at  ducks  and  drakes  with  inter- 
national politics.  And  now  Madame  de  Pompadour 
was  dead.  Many  a  younger  and  prettier  face  had 
caught  Louis*  doddering  fancy,  since  her  death.  But 
no  other  maitresse  en  tilre  had  ruled  him  and  France 
since  then. 

Briefly,  Jean  coveted  the  vacant  office  for  Marie. 


MADAME     DU     BARRY  185 

for  her  own  sake.  Jean  did  not  care  for  her  hap- 
piness or  welfare,  or  for  the  happiness  or  welfare  of 
ar.y  mortal  on  earth  except  of  one  Jean,  Vicomte  du 
B  .rry.  But  he  foresaw  that  with  Marie  as  the  royal 
favorite,  he  himself,  as  her  sponsor,  could  reap  a  har- 
v  ;st  such  as  is  not  the  guerdon  of  one  man  in  a  million. 

He  set  to  work  at  his  self-appointed  task  with  the 
s;  one  rare  vigor  and  cunning  that  had  so  long  enabled 
h.m  to  elude  the  hangman  and  to  live  on  better  men's 
money.  The  first  step  was  to  engage  the  help  of  Lebel, 
t  ie  king's  valet  de  chambre. 

(  Lebel  was  nominally  a  servant,  but,  in  a  sense,  he 
v  as  mightier  than  any  prime  minister.  For  Louis  relied 
haplicitly  on  the  valet's  taste  in  feminine  beauty.  It 
was  Lebel,  for  instance,  who  had  first  brought  Madame 
d':  Pompadour  to  the  king's  notice.  He  had  done  the 
same  good  turn  to  many  another  aspiring  damsel.  And 
now,  heavily  bribed  by  Jean  du  Barry,  he  consented 
t<  see  if  Marie  was  worth  mentioning  to  Louis. 

At  sight  of  Marie,  the  connoisseur  valet  realized  to 
t.ie  full  her  super- woman  charm.  He  recognized  her 
z  s  the  thousandth  woman — even  the  millionth. 

Yet  Lebel  was  ever  cautious  about  raising  false 
hopes.  So,  not  knowing  that  Jean  had  gone  over  the 
«vhole  plan  -with  Marie,  he  asked  her  if  she  would  honor 
him  by  attending  a  little  informal  dinner  he  was  soon 
to  give,  in  his  apartment,  at  the  Versailles  palace;  a  din- 
ner in  honor  of  "the  Baron  de  Gonesse." 

Marie,  with  sweet  innocence,   accepted  the  invita- 


186  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

tion ;  then  timidly  asked  Lebel  if  she  might  sit  besi  le 
him  at  the  dinner,  as  all  the  others  would  be  strangers 
to  her.  The  bare  thought  of  his  presuming  to  sit  down 
in  the  presence  of  the  king — otherwise  "the  Baron  c  e 
Gonesse" — so  filled  Lebel  with  horror  that  he  forget 
his  role  of  diplomacy  and  blurted  out: 

"I?  Sit  at  the  table  with  him?  I — I  shall  be  un- 
expectedly called  from  the  room,  as  usual,  just  as  din- 
ner is  served.  And  I  shall  not  return  until  it  is  over.  ' 

When  Marie — carefully  coached  as  to  behavior,  re- 
partee, and  so  forth,  by  the  ever-thoughtful  Jean — 
arrived  at  Lebel's  apartments  in  the  palace,  on  the  nighi 
of  the  dinner,  she  found,  to  her  disgust,  that  the  kinjj 
was  nowhere  in  sight — not  even  disguised  as  "thi 
Baron  de  Gonesse" — and  that  her  fellow  guests  weje 
merely  a  group  of  Versailles  officials. 

Not  being  versed  in  palace  secrets,  she  did  not  know 
that  Louis  was  seated  in  a  dark  closet  behind  a  film- 
curtained  window,  looking  into  the  brightly  lighted 
dining  room  and  noting  everything  that  went  on,  ncr 
that  cunningly  arranged  speaking  tubes  brought  ever/ 
•whispered  or  loud-spoken  word  to  him. 

Finding  the  king  was  not  to  be  one  of  the  guests 
the  girl  philosophically  choked  back  her  chagrin  and 
set  herself  to  get  every  atom  of  fun  out  of  the  evening 
that  she  could.  She  ate  much,  drank  more,  and  be- 
haved pretty  quite  like  a  gloriously  lovely  street  gamin. 
There  was  no  use  in  wasting  on  these  understrappers 
the  fine  speeches  and  the  courtesy  she  had  been  learn- 


MADAME     DU     BARRY  187 

ing  for  the  king's  benefit.  So  she  let  herself  go.  And 
the  dinner  was  lively,  to  say  the  very  least.  In  fact,  it 
was  the  gayest,  most  deliciously  amusing  dinner  ever 
held  in  those  sedate  rooms — thanks  to  Marie. 

Louis,  in  paroxysms  of  laughter,  looked  on  until  the 
sound  of  his  guffaws  betrayed  his  royal  presence.  Then 
he  came  out  of  hiding. 

Marie,  for  an  instant,  was  thunder-struck  at  what 
she  had  done.  She  feared  she  had  ruined  her  chances 
by  the  boisterous  gayety  of  the  past  hour  or  so.  Then 
— for  her  brain  was  as  quick  as  her  talk  was  dull — 
she  saw  the  fight  was  not  lost,  but  won,  and  she  knew 
how  she  had  won  it. 

Louis  XV.  was  fifty-eight  years  old.  He  lived  in 
France's  most  artificial  period.  No  one  dared  be 
natural;  least  of  all  in  the  presence  of  the  king.  All 
his  life  he  had  been  treated  to  honeyed  words,  pro- 
found reverence,  the  most  polished  and  adroit  courtesy. 
People — women  especially — had  never  dared  be 
human  when  he  was  around. 

Marie  saw  that  it  was  the  novelty  of  her  behavior 
which  had  aroused  the  king's  bored  interest.  And  from 
that  moment  her  course  was  taken.  She  did  not  cringe 
at  his  feet,  or  pretend  innocence,  or  assume  grande- 
dame  airs.  She  was  herself,  Marie  Becu,  the  slangy, 
light-hearted,  feather-brained  daughter  of  the  streets; 
respecting  nothing,  fearing  nothing,  confused  by 
nothing — as  ready  to  shriek  gutter  oaths  at  her  king  as 
at  her  footman.  And,  of  course,  she  was  also  Marie 


188  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

Becu,  the  super-woman  whose  magnetism  and  beauty 
were  utterly  irresistible. 

The  combination  was  too  much  for  Louis.  He  suc- 
cumbed. What  else  was  there  for  him  to  do?  After 
the  myriad  poses  of  the  women  he  had  known,  Marie's 
naturalness  was  like  a  bracing  breeze  sweeping  through 
a  hothouse;  a  slum  breeze,  if  you  like,  but  none  the 
less  a  breeze,  and  delightfully  welcome  to  the  jaded 
old  monarch. 

Louis  fell  in  love  with  Marie.  It  was  not  a  mere 
infatuation  of  an  hour,  like  most  of  his  affairs.  He  fell 
completely  and  foolishly  in  love  -with  her.  And 
he  never  fell  out  of  love  with  her  as  long  as  he 
lived. 

Lebel  was  in  despair.  He  had  hoped  Marie  might 
amuse  the  king.  He  had  had  no  shadow  of  an  idea 
that  the  affair  would  go  further.  By  reason  of  his 
privileges  as  an  old  servant,  he  actually  ventured  to 
remonstrate  with  Louis. 

"Sire,"  he  protested,  "she  is  not  even  legitimate. 
The  birth  records  attest  that." 

"Then,"  laughed  the  king,  "let  the  right  authorities 
make  her  so." 

Accordingly,  messengers  were  sent  posthaste  to  her 
babyhood  home,  and  a  new  birth  certificate  was  drawn 
up;  also  a  certificate  attesting  to  her  mother's  legal 
marriage  to  a  wholly  mythical  Monsieur  de  Gomard  de 
Vaubernier  and  to  several  other  statements  that  made 
Marie's  legitimacy  as  solid  as  Gibraltar. 


MADAME     DU     BARRY  189 

"Also,"  pleaded  the  valet,  "she  is  neither  a  wife 
nor  a  woman  of  title." 

"We  can  arrange  both  those  trifles,"  the  king  as- 
sured him. 

And,  with  charming  simplicity,  the  thing  was  done. 
Jean  sent  for  his  worthless  elder  brother,  Guillaume, 
Comte  du  Barry,  who  was  at  that  time  an  army  cap- 
tain. And  on  September  1 ,  1 768,  Marie  and 
Guillaume  were  duly  married.  The  lucky  bridgegroom 
received  enough  money  to  pay  all  his  debts  and  to 
make  him  rich.  Then  he  obligingly  deserted  his  new- 
made  wife  at  the  church  door,  according  to  program, 
and  wandered  away  to  spend  his  fortune  as  might  best 
please  him.  Thereby,  Marie  Becu  became  Madame 
la  Comtesse  du  Barry,  without  having  her  cur  of  a 
husband  to  bother  about. 

A  list  of  her  possessions  and  their  values — duly  set 
down  in  the  marriage  contract,  which  is  still  on  file — 
shows  the  state  of  Marie's  finances  at  this  time.  I  copy 
it  for  the  benefit  of  those  who  may  be  interested  to 
learn  of  a  useful  life's  by-products.  At  twenty-two — 
in  1  768 — so  says  the  contract,  Marie  was  the  sole 
owner  of: 


One  diamond  necklace,  worth  sixteen  hundred  dollars;  an 
aigret  and  a  pair  of  earings  in  clusters,  worth  sixteen  hundred 
dollars;  thirty  dresses  and  petticoats,  worth  six  hundred  dollars; 
lace,  dress  trimmings,  caps,  et  cetera,  worth  twelve  hundred 
dollars;  six  dozen  shirts  of  fine  linen,  twelve  complete  morning 


190  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

dresses,  and  other  articles  of  linen,  et  cetera,  worth  four  hund- 
red dollars. 


One  obstacle  alone  now  barred  Marie's  road  to 
supremacy.  According  to  unbreakable  royal  etiquette, 
three  things  were  indispensable  to  the  woman  who 
aspired  to  become  a  French  king's  maitresse  en  litre — 
she  must  be  legitimate,  she  must  be  of  noble  rank,  and 
she  must  have  been  presented  at  court. 

The  first  two  conditions,  Marie  had  fulfilled.  The 
third  was  a  poser.  In  order  to  be  presented  at  court, 
some  reputable  woman  of  the  old  nobility  must  act 
as  sponsor.  And  not  one  decent  woman  of  high  rank 
would  sink  to  acting  as  sponsor  for  Marie.  Moreover, 
the  king  declared  he  did  not  care  whether  she  were 
presented  or  not,  and  he  would  take  no  step  to  help 
her  in  the  matter. 

Without  this  presentation,  she  could  not  appear  pub- 
licly at  court,  she  could  not  sway  overt  political  in- 
fluence, she  could  not  have  a  suite  of  rooms  at  the 
palace.  Between  a  presentation  and  no  presentation 
lay  all  the  difference  between  uncrowned  queen  and 
a  light  o'  love.  And  no  one  would  sponsor  Marie. 

Jean  du  Barry,  at  last,  solved  the  problem,  as  he 
had  solved  all  the  rest. 

He  had  able  assistance.  For,  a  court  clique  had  been 
formed  to  back  Marie's  pretentions.  The  clique  was 
headed  by  such  men  as  the  old  Due  de  Richelieu  and 
the  much  younger  Due  d'Aiguillon.  The  latter  was 


MADAME     DU     BARRY  191 

violently  in  love  with  Marie,  and  there  is  no  reason  to 
think  that  his  love  was  hopeless.  But  the  rest  of  the 
clique  cared  not  a  straw  about  her.  To  them,  the 
whole  thing  was  a  master  move  in  politics.  With  Marie 
in  control  of  the  king,  and  themselves  in  control  of 
Marie,  they  foresaw  an  era  of  unlimited  power. 

The  Due  de  Choiseul,  prime  minister  of  France,  was 
the  sworn  enemy  of  this  clique,  which  formed  the  "op- 
position." And  Choiseul  swore  to  move  heaven  and 
earth  to  prevent  Marie's  presentation,  for  he  knew  it 
would  lead  to  his  own  political  ruin;  as  it  did. 

Jean  du  Barry  hunted  around  until  he  discovered 
somewhere  in  Navarre  a  crochety  and  impoverished  old 
widow,  the  dowager  Comtesse  de  Beam.  She  was  a 
scion  of  the  ancient  nobility,  the  decayed  and  dying 
branch  of  a  once  mighty  tree.  She  was  not  only  poor 
to  the  verge  of  starvation,  but  she  had  a  passion  for 
lawsuits.  She  had  just  lost  a  suit,  and  was  on  the 
verge  of  bankruptcy. 

The  good-hearted  Jean,  through  the  clique's  help, 
arranged  to  have  the  case  reopened  and  the  decision 
reversed.  This  was  before  our  own  day  of  an  incor- 
ruptible judiciary.  He  also  promised  her  a  gift  of 
twenty  thousand  dollars  in  gold.  All  this  in  return 
for  the  trifling  service  of  journeying  up  to  Paris  and 
thence  to  Versailles,  to  act  as  sponsor  for  the  lovely 
Madame  du  Barry,  who  had  wilfully  declared  that  she 
would  be  presented  under  no  less  auspices  than  those 
of  the  illustrious  Comtesse  de  Beam. 


192  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

The  old  comtesse  accepted  the  offer  with  all  the 
shrinking  reluctance  a  hungry  dog  shows  at  the  proffer 
of  a  bone.  She  came  up  to  Paris,  at  the  expense  of 
the  clique,  and  was  immured  in  Jean's  house,  with  the 
gambler's  sister,  Chon  (Fanchon)  du  Barry  as  her 
jailer  and  entertainer. 

Choiseul,  through  his  spies,  learned  of  the  plot,  and 
he  tried  in  every  way  to  kidnap  the  old  lady  or  to  out- 
bribe  the  du  Barrys. 

Meanwhile,  coached  by  Jean,  the  fair  Marie  was 
making  King  Louis'  life  miserable  by  throwing  herself 
at  his  feet,  in  season  and  out  of  season,  and  beseeching 
him  to  silence  her  enemies  forever  by  allowing  her  to 
be  presented.  When  these  tactics  failed,  she  would 
let  loose  upon  the  poor  king  a  flood  of  gutter  language, 
roundly  abusing  him,  turning  the  air  blue  with  her 
profanity,  and  in  other  ways  showing  her  inalienable 
right  to  a  place  in  court  circles. 

Louis  would  promise  nothing.  The  turmoil  alter- 
nately bored  and  amused  him.  At  last — April  2 1 , 
1  769 — on  his  return  from  the  hunt,  after  an  unusually 
good  day's  sport,  the  king  casually  remarked  to  all 
concerned : 

"The  presentation  of  Madame  la  Comtesse  du  Barry 
•will  occur  at  to-morrow  evening's  levee." 

The  traditional  and  well-thumbed  bombshell  ex- 
ploding among  them  would  have  created  no  more  stir 
in  court  circles  than  did  this  yawned  announcement. 
Choiseul  and  his  followers  were  in  despair.  Jean  ran 


MADAME     DU     BARRY  193 

around  in  circles,  making  preparations  for  the  triumph. 
Marie  rehearsed  for  the  hundredth  time  the  compli- 
cated forms  of  etiquette  the  occasion  called  for. 

The  Choiseul  faction  tried  one  thing  after  another  to 
block  the  ceremony.  They  kidnapped  Marie's  hair- 
dresser, stole  the  coach  in  which  she  was  to  make  the 
trip  from  her  Paris  house  to  Versailles,  arranged  a 
holdup  on  the  road,  and  so  forth.  Thanks  to  Jean's 
wit  and  clique's  power,  a  new  hairdresser  and  coach 
were  provided  in  the  nick  of  time.  And  the  Versailles 
road  was  so  heavily  guarded  that  a  regiment  of  cavalry 
could  scarce  have  dared  intercept  the  carriage. 

According  to  one  story,  Choiseul  even  got  a  mes- 
sage past  all  the  carefully  reared  barriers  to  Madame 
de  Beam,  prevailing  on  her  to  plead  agonized  illness 
and  to  keep  to  her  bed  on  the  evening  set  for  the 
presentation.  Whereupon,  so  runs  the  yarn,  a  char- 
acter actor  from  the  Comedie  Francaise  was  paid  to 
"make  up"  as  Madame  de  Beam  and  to  perform  her 
functions  of  sponsor.  This  may  or  may  not  be  true. 
It  forms  the  central  theme  of  De  Vere  Stacpoole's 
novel,  "The  Presentation." 

On  the  great  night,  the  court  was  assembled,  tensely 
waiting  for  Marie  to  arrive.  At  the  appointed  time — • 
no  Madame  du  Barry  appeared.  The  minutes  grew 
into  an  hour;  people  began  to  whisper  and  fidget;  the 
Choiseul  party  looked  blissful;  the  clique  could  not 
hide  its  worry.  Louis  stood,  frowning,  between  the 
suspense  stricken  D'Aiguillon  and  Richelieu.  At  last 


194  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

he  turned  from  them  and  stared  moodily  out  of  a 
window.  Then,  moving  back  into  the  room,  he  opened 
his  lips  to  declare  the  levee  at  an  end.  As  he  started 
to  speak,  an  usher  announced: 

"Madame  la  Comtesse  de  Beam!  Madame  la  Com- 
tesse  du  Barry!" 

And  Marie  entered,  with  her  sponsor — or  with  some 
one  who  looked  sufficiently  like  Madame  de  Bearne  to 
deceive  any  one. 

According  to  one  version,  Marie  was  late  because 
at  the  last  instant  another  Choiseul  obtacle  had  to  be 
cleared  away.  According  to  another,  she  was  pur- 
posely late  to  enhance  the  dramatic  interest  of  her 
arrival.  Here  is  an  account  of  the  presentation: 

Madame  du  Barry,  with  her  chaperon,  advanced  to  where 
the  king  stood  bet-ween  their  graces,  the  Dues  of  Richelieu  and 
Aigullon.  The  formal  words  were  spoken,  and  Madame  du 
Barry  sank  to  the  ground  before  the  king  in  a  profound  curtsy. 
He  raised  her  right  hand  courteously,  his  lips  twitching  with 
laughter. 

She  was  decked  in  jewels,  priced  at  nineteen  thousand  dol- 
lars, the  gift  of  the  king.  She  was  garbed  in  one  of  the  tri- 
umphant gowns  that  the  women  of  the  hour  termed  a  "fighting 
dress."  So  radiant  an  apparition  was  she,  so  dazzling  at  the 
first  minute  of  surprise,  that  even  her  enemies  could  not  libel 
her  beauty.  After  she  was  presented  to  the  king,  she  was  duly 
presented  to  Mesdames,  to  the  Dauphin,  to  the  Children  of 
France. 

Marie  had  won.      For  the  next  five  years  she  was 


MADAME     DU     BARRY  195 

the  real  Queen  of  France.  And,  during  that  time, 
she  cost  the  French  nation,  in  cold  cash,  something 
over  seven  million  dollars. 

She  was  not  at  all  on  the  style  of  the  Pompadour, 
who  had  yearned  to  meddle  in  politics.  Marie  cared 
nothing  for  politics,  except  to  help  out  her  army  of 
friends  and  dependents.  She  had  no  ambitions.  She 
had  not  even  craved  on  her  own  account  to  be  the 
king's  maitresse  en  titre.  All  she  wanted  was  to  have 
a  good  time.  And  she  had  it.  The  pleasure  was  all 
hers.  The  French  people  did  the  paying;  until,  years 
later,  they  exacted  bloody  settlement  of  the  score. 

Pompadour  had  worn  out  her  life  trying  to  "amuse 
the  unamusable,"  to  find  novelties  that  would  enter- 
tain the  king.  Marie  did  nothing  of  the  sort.  Instead, 
she  demanded  that  the  king  amuse  her.  Pompadour 
had  sought  to  sway  the  destinies  of  nations.  Marie 
was  quite  happy  if  she  could  spend  the  revenues  of  her 
own  nation. 

She  treated  Louis  in  a  way  that  caused  the  court  to 
gasp  with  horror.  She  scolded  him  shrilly;  petted  him, 
in  public,  as  if  he  had  been  her  peasant  spouse;  and 
always  addressed  him  as  "France."  He  enjoyed  it. 
It  was  a  novelty. 

Once,  when  she  was  giving  an  informal  breakfast 
with  a  dozen  or  more  nobles  as  guests,  she  ordered  the 
king  to  make  the  coffee.  Amused,  he  obeyed.  She 
took  one  sip  of  the  royal-brewed  beverage,  then  tossed 
the  cup  into  the  fireplace,  exclaiming: 


196  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

"France,  your  coffee  is  as  insipid  as  your  talk!" 

All  political  matters  she  turned  over  to  d'Aiguillon, 
who  was  the  clique's  spokesman.  To  please  him,  and 
to  "get  even"  for  old  scores,  she  caused  the  ruin  of 
Choiseul. 

The  mode  of  Choiseul's  downfall  is  interesting  as  a 
side  light  on  court  intrigue.  The  clique  taught  Marie 
how  to  poison  the  king's  ever-suspicious  mind  against 
the  prime  minister,  and  she  did  so  with  great  success. 
Thanks  to  her,  Louis  was  held  to  believe  that  Choiseul, 
feeling  his  power  over  the  monarch  slipping,  was  plan- 
ning a  war  scare  with  Spain,  so  that  he  could  prove 
his  seeming  worth  to  the  kingdom  of  France  by  dis- 
pelling the  cloud. 

The  clique — having  access,  through  a  spy,  to  all  of 
Choiseul's  correspondence — resorted  to  a  fairly  in- 
genious trick.  At  Marie's  suggestion,  Choiseul's  sec- 
retary was  summoned  to  the  palace.  He  was  in  the 
clique's  pay.  Before  the  king,  he  was  questioned  as 
to  what  he  knew  about  Choiseul's  affairs. 

The  man,  with  an  air  of  mystery,  answered  that  he 
knew  nothing  of  them,  but  that  he  would  give  his 
majesty  one  hint — let  the  king  request  Choiseul  to  write 
a  letter  to  Spain,  assuring  that  nation  of  France's  peace- 
ful intent.  Should  Choiseul  do  so  without  comment,  it 
would  show  he  was  not  plotting  a  war  scare,  as  charged. 
But  should  he  hesitate — well,  what  could  that  prove, 
instead  ? 

The  plotters  already  knew  that  Choiseul  had  that 


MADAME     DU     BARRY  197 

very  day  sent  a  letter  to  Spain,  proposing  the  mutual 
signing  of  a  declaration  of  peace  between  the  nations. 
The  king  requested  his  minister  to  send  a  letter  that 
was  almost  identical  with  the  one  he  had  already  writ- 
ten and  dispatched.  Naturally  Choiseul  hesitated.  And 
the  work  was  done. 

Yet,  out  of  careless  good  nature — she  would  not 
have  bothered  to  harm  anybody,  politically  or  other- 
wise, if  she  had  had  her  own  way — Marie  insisted  that 
the  king  settle  a  liberal  pension  on  the  fallen  minister; 
this  despite  the  fact  that  Choiseul  and  his  sister,  Ma- 
dame de  Grammont,  had  both  worked  with  all  their 
might  and  main  to  block  her  rise. 

She  was  good,  too — as  they  all  were — to  her  mother. 
She  presented  the  horrible  old  woman  with  two  or 
three  estates  and  a  generous  income.  She  did  the  same 
for  her  titular  husband,  Guillaume,  Comte  du  Barry. 
Her  lightest  fancy  was  enough  to  make  or  wreck  any 
Frenchman.  Everybody,  high  or  low,  was  at  her 
mercy.  People  of  the  bluest  blood  vied  for  chances 
to  win  her  favor. 

The  Chevalier  de  la  Morliere  dedicated  his  book 
on  Fatalism  to  her.  The  Due  de  Tresmes,  calling  on 
her,  sent  in  a  note:  "The  monkey  of  Madame  la  Com- 
tesse  begs  an  audience."  The  Dauphin — afterward 
Louis  XVI. — and  Marie  Antoinette,  the  Dauphiness, 
were  forced  to  abase  themselves  before  this  vulgarian 
woman  whom  they  loathed.  She  reigned  supreme. 

Extravagant   as  Pompadour  had  been,   Marie  was 


198  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

tenfold  more  so.  She  not  only  made  the  king  gratify 
her  every  crazy  whim,  but  she  spent  much  time  invent- 
ing crazy  whims  for  him  to  gratify.  If  anything  on 
sale  was  costly  enough,  she  wanted  it,  whether  it  was 
pretty  or  hideous.  All  Marie  demanded  was  that  the 
article  should  be  beyond  the  reach  of  any  one  else. 
In  consequence,  people  who  wanted  to  please  her 
used  to  shower  her  with  gifts  more  noteworthy  for  cost 
and  for  unusualness  than  for  beauty.  And  one  of 
these  gifts  chanced  to  be  a  jet-black  and  quaintly  de- 
formed ten-year-old  slave  boy,  from  Bengal.  The 
slave's  native  name  was  unpronounceable,  and  the 
Prince  of  Conti — who  had  bought  him  from  a  sea 
captain  and  presented  him  to  Marie — renamed  him 
Louis  Zamore. 

Marie  was  delighted  with  the  boy — as  soon  as  she 
heard  the  price  paid  for  him,  and  that  he  was  the  only 
one  of  his  species  in  France.  She  dressed  him  in  out- 
landish Eastern  garb,  and  she  used  to  tease  him  into 
screeching  rages,  as  a  mischievous  child  might  tease  a 
monkey.  The  slave  child  grew  to  detest  his  lovely 
owner.  Remember  Louis  Zamore,  please.  He  will 
come  back  into  the  story. 

Here  is  a  correct,  but  incomplete,  list  of  Marie's 
personal  expenditures  during  the  five  years  of  her 
reign  as  brevet  queen  of  France: 

To  goldsmiths  and  jewelers,  four  hundred  and  twenty-four 
thousand  dollars;  to  merchants  of  silks,  laces,  linens,  millinery, 


MADAME     DU     BARRY  199' 

one  hundred  and  forty-seven  thousand  five  hundred  dollars; 
for  furniture,  pictures,  vases,  et  cetera,  twenty-three  thousand 
five  hundred  dollars;  to  gilders,  sculptors,  workers  in  marble, 
seventy-five  thousand  dollars.  On  her  estate  at  Luciennes — 
whose  chateau  was  built  in  three  months  by  the  architect  Le- 
doux,  whom  she  thrust  into  the  Academy  for  doing  it — she 
spent  sixty-five  thousand  dollars. 


The  heirs  of  one  firm  of  creditors  were,  as  late  as 
1836,  still  claiming  the  sum  of  one  hundred  and  thirty 
thousand  dollars  from  her  estate.  She  had  "state 
dresses,  hooped  dresses,  dresses  sur  la  consideration, 
robes  de  toilette;"  dresses  costing  two  hundred  dollars, 
four  hundred  dollars,  six  hundred  dollars,  and  one 
thousand  dollars;  dresses  with  a  base  of  silver  strewn 
with  clusters  of  feathers;  dresses  striped  with  big  bars 
of  gold;  mosaic  dresses  shot  with  gold  and  adorned 
with  myrtle;  and  riding  habits  of  white  Indian  silk 
that  cost  twelve  hundred  dollars. 

She  had  dresses  whose  elaborate  embroidery  alone 
cost  twenty-one  hundred  dollars.  Her  dressing  gowns 
had  lace  on  them  worth  five  hundred  dollars  and  eight 
hundred  dollars.  She  had  cuffs  of  lace  costing  one 
hundred  and  twenty-five  dollars,  point-lace  caps  valued 
at  three  hundred  dollars,  and  point  Argentan  costumes 
at  eighteen  hundred  dollars.  She  ordered  gold  orna- 
ments and  trinkets  of  all  sorts  galore.  Roettiers,  the 
goldsmith,  received  an  order  from  her  for  a  toilet  set 
of  solid  gold — for  which  she  had  a  sudden  whim.  The 


200  STORIES      OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

government  advanced  twelve  thousand  ounces  of  gold 
for  it. 

Boehmer,  the  Paris  jeweler,  knowing  of  her  love  for 
ultra-costly  things,  made  up  for  her  a  huge  diamond 
necklace,  of  a  heterogeneous  mass  of  many-carat 
diamonds,  arranged  with  regard  to  show  and  wholly 
without  a  thought  of  good  taste.  The  necklace  was 
so  big  and  so  expensive  that  Marie  declared  at  once 
she  must  have  it.  Louis  willingly  consented  to  buy  it 
for  her;  but  he  died  before  the  purchase  was  made, 
and  Boehmer  was  left  with  the  ugly  treasure  loop  on 
his  hands.  Long  afterward  he  tried  to  sell  it  to  Marie 
Antoinette.  And  from  that  transaction  rose  the  mys- 
tery of  "The  Queen's  Necklace,"  which  did  much  to 
hasten  the  French  Revolution. 

In  the  spring  of  1  774,  as  King  Louis  and  Marie  were 
driving  toward  Versailles,  they  saw  a  pretty  girl  in  a 
wayside  field,  gathering  grass  for  her  cow.  Louis 
greeted  the  girl  with  a  fatherly  smile.  The  girl  looked 
back  at  him  with  perfect  indifference. 

Piqued  at  such  unwonted  contempt  for  his  royal  self, 
the  king  got  out  of  his  carriage,  waddled  across  to 
where  the  girl  stood,  and  kissed  her.  The  reason  she 
had  seemed  indifferent  was  because  she  was  dazed. 
The  reason  she  was  dazed  was  that  she  was  in  the  early 
stages  of  smallpox. 

Louis  caught  the  infection  and  died  a  few  days  later. 

The  first  act  of  Louis  XVI. — the  king's  grandson 
and  successor — was  to  order  Marie  to  a  convent.  Later 


MADAME     DU     BARRY  201 

he  softened  the  decree  by  allowing  her  to  live  at 
Luciennes,  or  anywhere  else  outside  a  ten-mile  radius 
from  Paris. 

Then  it  was  that  the  fallen  favorite  met  Cosse  once 
more.  And  their  old-time  love  story  recommenced,  this 
time  on  a  less  platonic  footing.  She  kept  her  title  of 
"Comtesse,"  and  had  enough  money — as  she  paid  few 
of  her  debts — to  live  in  luxury;  still  beautiful,  still 
loved,  still  moderately  young. 

The  Revolution  burst  forth.  Marie  enrolled  herself 
as  a  stanch  loyalist.  Hearing  that  the  king  and  queen 
were  pressed  for  funds,  she  wrote  to  Marie  Antoinette: 

Luciennes  is  yours,  madame.  All  that  I  possess  comes  to  me 
from  the  royal  family;  I  am  too  grateful  ever  to  forget  it.  The 
late  king,  with  a  sort  of  presentiment,  forced  me  to  accept  a 
thousand  precious  objects.  1  have  had  the  honor  of  making 
you  an  inventory  of  these  treasures — I  offer  them  to  you  with 
eagerness.  You  have  so  many  expenses  to  meet,  and  benefits 
without  number  to  bestow.  Permit  me,  I  entreat  you,  to 
render  unto  Caesar  that  which  is  Caesar's. 

When  the  king  and  queen  were  beheaded,  she  secret- 
ly wore  black  for  them.  Also,  she  made  a  trip  to 
England,  where  she  tried  to  sell  some  of  her  jewels 
to  help  the  royalist  cause.  All  these  things  were  duly 
repeated  to  the  revolutionary  government  by  Louis 
Zamore,  her  Bengalese  servant. 

One  evening  she  was  expecting  a  visit  from  Cosse. 
But  midnight  came,  and  he  had  not  appeared. 

"Go  down  the  road,"  she  ordered  Zamore,  who  had 


202  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

just  returned  from  an  errand  to  Paris,  "and  see  if  you 
can  catch  sight  of  him." 

"I  can  show  him  to  you— —or  part  of  him — without 
troubling  to  do  that,"  retorted  Zamore,  with  sudden 
insolence. 

Whipping  one  hand  from  behind  his  back,  he  tossed 
on  the  floor  at  Marie's  feet  the  head  of  her  lover. 
Cosse  had  been  guillotined  that  day.  Zamore,  in 
return  for  certain  information  to  the  government,  had 
received  the  head  as  a  gift. 

The  information  he  had  given  led  to  Marie's  arrest 
on  the  following  charges: 

"Having  wasted  the  treasures  of  the  state,  conspir- 
ing with  the  enemies  of  the  Republic,  and  having,  in 
London,  worn  mourning  for  the  late  King.'* 

Marie  was  sentenced  to  death,  on  December  7,  1 793, 
and  was  beheaded  the  same  day.  Almost  alone  of  all 
the  Frenchwomen  thus  put  to  death,  she  turned  coward 
at  the  last.  The  strain  of  peasant  blood  came  to  the 
fore.  And  where  aristocrats  rode  smiling  to  the 
scaffold,  Marie  du  Barry  behaved  like  a  panic-stricken 
child.  She  fell  on  her  knees  and  begged  for  her  life. 
She  told  where  every  article  of  value  she  possessed  was 
buried,  in  her  garden.  If  she  thought  thus  to  buy  back 
her  life,  she  did  not  understand  the  souls  of  such  men 
as  her  captors. 

They  heard  her  to  the  end,  jotting  down  the  direc- 
tions for  finding  her  treasure.  Then  she  was  put  into 
the  tumbril,  and  was  started  on  her  way  to  the  scaffold. 


MADAME     DU     BARRY  203 

The  journey  led  past  the  old  millinery  shop  where  she 
had  once  worked.  As  she  caught  sight  of  its  sign,  she 
screamed  out,  twice. 

The  crowd  had  long  ago  grown  accustomed  to  the 
sight  of  death.  Now  they  seemed  to  awaken  to  the 
fact  that  they  were  about  to  kill  a  woman,  a  wondrous 
beautiful  woman,  at  that.  A  sigh  of  pity  ran  through 
the  throng.  The  driver  in  carge  of  the  tumbril,  fear- 
ing a  riot  and  a  rescue,  whipped  up  the  horses  and 
drove  on  with  his  load.  There  were  others  besides 
Madame  du  Barry  in  the  death  wagon. 

The  cart  reached  the  scaffold  at  four-thirty  in  the 
afternoon.  Marie  was  the  first  to  mount  the  steps  to 
the  guillotine. 

Says  De  Goncourt,  her  biographer: 

"They  heard  her  on  the  steps  of  the  scaffold,  lost 
and  desperate,  mad  with  anguish  and  terror, 
struggling,  imploring,  begging  for  mercy,  crying, 
'Help !  Help !'  like  a  woman  being  assassinated  by  rob- 
bers." 

Then  fell  the  ax  edge.  And  Marie's  seven-million- 
dollar  debt  to  the  people  of  France  was  paid. 


CHAPTER  TEN 

"THE  MOST  GORGEOUS  LADY 
BLESSINGTON" 

SHE  was  the  ugly  duckling  of  a  family  of  seven 
beautiful  children — the  children  of  queer  old 
"Shiver-the-Frills"  Power,  of  Tipperary.  Her 
name  was  Marguerite.  Her  father  picked  out  a  pretty 
name  for  the  homely  girl  and  then  considered  his  duty 
done. 

Marguerite  was  a  great  trial  to  everybody;  to  her 
good-looking  brothers  and  lovely  sisters;  to  Shiver-the- 
Frills,  who  was  bitterly  chagrined  that  his  record  for 
beauteous  offspring  should  have  been  marred  by  so 
hideous  an  exception;  to  the  family  governess,  who 
wouldn't  even  take  the  trouble  to  teach  her  to  read; 
to  the  neighbors,  whose  joy  in  beauty  she  offended. 
Altogether,  Marguerite  was  taught  to  consider  herself 
a  mistake.  It  is  a  lesson  that  children  learn  with  pitiful 
readiness.  Perhaps  the  mystic  "Unpardonable  Sin" 
consists  in  teaching  them  such  a  damnable  doctrine- 

Her  father's  baptismal  name  was  not  really  Shiver- 


"THE  MOST  GORGEOUS  LADY  BLESSINGTON"         205 

the-Frills,  though  nobody  ever  spoke  of  him  by  any 
other  term.  He  had  been  christened  Edmund,  and 
he  was  a  squireen  of  the  Tipperary  village  of  Knock- 
brit.  He  was  a  local  magistrate,  and  he  fulfilled  his 
magisterial  office  almost  as  well  as  a  mad  dog  might 
have  done. 

He  had  an  insane  temper.  He  did  not  confine  this 
to  his  home — where  he  beat  his  children  and  servants 
most  unmercifully — but  aired  it  on  the  bench  as  well. 
Notably  when,  in  a  rage,  he  lawlessly  commandeered  a 
troop  of  dragoons  and  galloped  over  Tipperary  and 
Waterford  Counties  with  them,  hunting  down  and  kill- 
ing peasants  who  had  stirred  his  anger  to  maniac  heat 
by  some  petty  uprising. 

He  was  a  dandy — fop — macaroni — toff — whatever 
you  choose,  too;  in  a  tarnished  and  down-at-heel  way. 
And  from  his  habit  of  eternally  shaking  out  his  dirty 
shirt  ruffles  and  lace  wristbands,  in  order  to  keep  them 
from  hanging  limply,  he  was  called  "Shiver-the-Frills." 

Marguerite's  home  life  was  one  unbroken  hell. 
Starvation,  shabby-genteel  rags,  beatings,  and  full- 
flavored  curses  were  her  daily  portion.  A  kind-hearted 
neighbor,  Miss  Anne  Dwyer,  took  pity  on  the  poor, 
abused  little  ugly  duckling  and  taught  her  to  read  and 
write.  But  for  this,  she  would  have  grown  up  too 
ignorant  to  pass  the  very  simplest  literacy  test. 

And  an  odd  use  the  child  proceeded  to  make  of  her 
smattering  of  education.  Before  she  could  spell  cor- 
rectly, she  began  to  write  stories.  These  she  would 


206  STORIES     OF     THE     SUPER-WOMEN 

read  aloud  by  the  peat  smolder,  on  winter  evenings,  to 
her  awed  brothers  and  sisters,  who  looked  on  such  an 
accomplishment  as  little  short  of  super-natural. 

Wonderful  stories  she  wrote,  all  about  princesses 
who  had  all  the  clothes  they  could  wear  and  who  could 
afford  three  square  meals,  with  real  butter,  every  single 
day  of  their  lives;  and  about  princes  who  never  swore 
at  or  beat  children  or  flew  into  crazy  rages  or  even 
fluttered  dirty  ruffles. 

The  girl's  gift  at  story  writing  gave  her  a  higher 
place  in  the  family  esteem  than  she  had  ever  enjoyed 
before.  So  did  another  miracle  which  came  to  pass 
when  Marguerite  was  about  twelve.  She  grew  pretty. 
The  ugly  duckling,  in  less  than  a  single  year,  developed 
from  repulsive  homeliness  into  a  striking  beauty.  In 
fact,  by  the  time  she  was  fourteen,  she  was  far  and 
away  the  loveliest  of  all  the  "exquisite  Power  sisters." 

Then  began  her  career  of  super-woman.  For,  with 
dawning  beauty,  came  an  access  of  the  elusive  charm 
that  sets  Marguerite's  type  apart  from  the  rest  of 
womankind.  And  men  were  swift  to  recognize  her 
claim  to  their  worship.  The  swains  whom  Shiver-the- 
Frills  allowed  to  visit  his  tumble-down  mansion  paid 
court  to  her  instead  of  to  her  sisters.  The  fame  of  her 
reached  the  near-by  garrison  town  of  Clonmel,  and 
brought  a  host  of  young  redcoat  officers  swarming  to 
the  Knockbrit  house. 

Of  these  officers,  two  soon  put  themselves  far  ir  the 
van  of  all  other  contestants.  They  were  Captain  Mur- 


"THE  MOST  GORGEOUS  LADY  BLESSINGTON"         207 

ray  and  Captain  Maurice  St.  Leger  Farmer.  Murray 
was  a  jolly,  happy-go-lucky,  penniless  chap,  lovable 
and  ardent.  The  kindest  thing  one  can  say  about  Cap- 
tain Farmer  is  that  he  was  more  than  half  insane. 

Marguerite  met  Captain  Murray's  courtship  more 
than  halfway.  But  Shiver-the-Frills  told  the  sighing, 
but  impecunious,  swain  to  keep  off,  and  ordered  Mar- 
guerite to  marry  Farmer,  who  had  a  snug  fortune. 
Marguerite  very  naturally  objected.  Shiver-the-Frills 
flew  into  a  ready-made  rage  and  frightened  the  poor 
youngster  almost  to  death  by  his  threats  of  what  should 
befall  her  if  she  did  not  change  her  mind. 

So,  cowed  into  submission,  she  meekly  agreed  to 
marry  Farmer.  And  marry  him  she  did,  in  1805, 
when  she  was  but  fifteen. 

It  was  an  early  marrying  age,  even  in  that  era  of 
early  marriages.  Many  years  had  passed  since  Sheri- 
dan's metrical  toast  "to  the  maiden  of  bashful  fifteen." 
And,  as  now,  a  girl  of  fifteen  was  deemed  too  young 
for  wedlock.  But  all  this  did  not  deter  old  Shiver-the- 
frills  from  a  laudable  firmness  in  getting  rid  of  the 
daughter  he  hated.  So  he  married  her  off — to  a  man 
who  ought  to  have  been  in  an  insane  asylum;  in  an 
asylum  for  the  criminally  insane,  at  that. 

If  Marguerite's  life  at  Knockbrit  had  been  unhappy, 
her  new  life  was  positive  torture.  Farmer's  temper  was 
worse  than  Shiver-the-Frills.*  And  he  added  habitual 
drunkenness  to  his  other  allurements. 

There  is  no  profit  in  going  into  full  details  of  Mar- 


208  STORIES     OF     THE      SUPER- WOMEN 

guerite's  horrible  sojourn  -with  him.  One  of  his  milder 
amusements  was  to  pinch  her  until  the  blood  spurted 
from  her  white  flesh.  He  flogged  her  as  he  never  dared 
flog  his  dogs.  And  he  used  to  lock  her  for  days  in  an 
unheated  room,  in  winter,  with  nothing  to  eat  or  drink. 

Marguerite  stood  it  as  long  as  she  could.  Then  she 
ran  away.  You  can  imagine  how  insufferable  she  had 
found  Farmer,  when  I  say  she  went  back  by  choice  to 
her  father's  house. 

Shiver-the-frills  greeted  the  unhappy  girl  with  one 
of  his  dear  old  rages.  His  rage  was  not  leveled  at  the 
cur  who  had  so  vilely  misused  her,  but  against  fhe 
young  wife  who  had  committed  the  crime  of  deserting 
her  husband. 

Not  being  of  the  breed  that  uses  bare  fingers  to  test 
the  efficiency  of  buzz-saws,  I  neither  express,  nor  so 
much  as  dare  to  cherish  in  secret,  any  opinion  what- 
soever on  the  theme  of  Woman's  Rights.  But  it  is  a 
wholly  safe  and  noncontroversial  thing  to  say  that  the 
fate  of  woman  at  large,  and  especially  of  husband-de- 
serters, to-day,  is  paradise  by  comparison  with  what  it 
was  a  century  ago.  For  leaving  a  husband  who  had 
not  refused  to  harbor  her,  Marguerite  became  in  a 
measure  an  outcast.  She  could  not  divorce  Farmer; 
she  could  not  make  him  support  her,  unless  she  would 
return  to  him.  She  was  eyed  askance  by  the  elect. 
Her  own  family  felt  that  she  was  smirched. 

Shiver-the-Frills  cursed  her  roundly,  and  is  said  to 
have  assumed  the  heavy-father  role  by  ordering  her  to 


"THE  MOST  GORGEOUS  LADY  BLESSINGTON"         209 

leave  his  ramshackle  old  house.  Without  money,  with- 
out protector,  without  reputation,  she  was  cast  adrift. 

There  was  no  question  of  alimony,  of  legal  redress, 
of  freedom;  the  laws  were  all  on  Farmer's  side.  So 
was  public  opinion.  Strange  to  say,  no  public  bene- 
factor even  took  the  trouble  to  horsewhip  the  husband. 
He  was  not  even  ostracized  from  his  own  circle  for  his 
treatment  to  his  girl  wife. 

Remember,  this  was  in  the  earliest  years  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  and  in  a  country  where  many  people 
still  regarded  wife-beating  as  a  healthful  indoor  sport. 
Less  than  three  decades  had  elapsed  since  a  man  im- 
mortalized by  Thackeray  had  made  the  proud  boast 
that,  during  the  first  year  of  his  married  life,  he  had 
never,  when  sober,  struck  his  wife  in  anger.  Nor  was 
it  so  very  long  after  the  Lord  Chief  Justice  of  England 
handed  down  an  official  decision  that  a  man  might 
legally  "punish  his  wife  with  a  rod  no  thicker  than  his 
lordship's  thumb."  Whereat,  one  -woman  inquired 
anxiously  whether  his  lordship  chanced  to  suffer  from 
gouty  swelling  of  the  hands.  Oh,  it  was  a  merry  time 
and  a  merry  land — for  women — this  "Merrie  England 
of  the  good  old  days!" 

Marguerite  vanished  from  home,  from  friends,  from 
family.  And  a  blank  space  follows.  In  the  lives  of 
scores  of  super-women — of  Lola  Mbntez,  Marie  de 
Chevreuse,  Lady  Hamilton,  Adah  Menken,  Peg  Wof- 
fington,  Adrienne  Lecouvreur,  even  of  Cleopatra — 
there  was  somewhere  a  hiatus, — a  "dark  spot"  that 


210  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

they  would  never  afterward  consent  to  illumine.  And 
such  a  line  of  asterisks  sheared  its  way  across  Mar- 
guerite's page  at  this  point. 

She  is  next  heard  of  as  leading  a  charmingly  un-nun- 
like  existence  at  Cahair,  and,  two  years  later,  at  Dub- 
lin. At  the  Irish  metropolis,  she  enamored  the  great 
Sir  Thomas  Lawrence,  whose  portrait  of  her  is  one  of 
his  most  famous  paintings,  and  one  that  is  familiar  to 
nearly  everybody.  The  picture  was  painted  in  1 809 
when  Marguerite  was  just  twenty  and  in  the  early 
prime  of  her  beauty. 

She  had  ever  a  knack  of  enslaving  army  men,  and 
her  next  wooer — in  fact,  Lawrence's  lucky  rival — was 
an  Irish  captain,  one  Jenkins.  She  and  Jenkins  fell 
very  seriously  in  love  with  each  other.  There  was 
nothing  at  all  platonic  in  their  relations. 

Jenkins  was  eager  to  marry  Marguerite.  And  when 
he  found  he  could  not  do  so,  because  of  the  trifling 
obstacle  that  her  husband  was  alive,  he  sought  a  chance 
to  put  Captain  Maurice  St.  Leger  Farmer  out  of  the 
road.  But  he  was  a  square  sort  of  chap,  in  his  way, 
this  lovelorn  Jenkins.  He  balked  at  the  idea  of  mur- 
der, and  a  duel  would  have  put  him  in  peril  of  losing 
Marguerite  by  dying.  So  he  let  Farmer  severely  alone, 
and  contented  himself  by  waiting  impatiently  until  the 
drunken  husband-emeritus  should  see  fit  to  die. 

And,  until  that  happy  hour  should  come,  he  declared 
that  Marguerite  was  at  least  his  wife  in  the  eyes  of 
Heaven.  Startingly  novel  mode  of  gluing  together  the 


"THE  MOST  GORGEOUS  LADY  BLESSINGTON"        21 1 

fragments  of  a  fractured  commandment  1  But  the 
strange  part  of  the  affair  is  that  Captain  Jenkins'  em- 
inently respectable  family  consented  to  take  the  same 
view  of  the  case  and  publicly  welcomed  Marguerite  as 
the  captain's  legal  wife. 

And  so,  for  a  time,  life  went  on.  Marguerite  was 
as  nearly  respectable  as  the  laws  of  her  time  gave  her 
the  right  to  be.  Jenkins  was  all  devotion.  She  was 
moderately  well  received  in  local  society,  and  she  kept 
on  winning  the  hearts  of  all  the  men  who  ventured 
within  her  sway. 

Then  into  her  life  swirled  Charles  John  Gardiner, 
Earl  of  Blessington,  one  of  the  most  eccentric  and  thor- 
oughly delightful  figures  of  his  day. 

Blessington  was  an  Irish  peer,  a  widower,  a  man  of 
fashion.  He  had  a  once-enormous  rent  roll,  that  had 
been  sadly  honeycombed  by  his  mad  extravagances, 
but  that  still  totaled  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
dollars  a  year. 

What  chance  had  the  worthy,  but  humble,  Captain 
Jenkins  against  this  golden-tinged  whirlwind  wooer? 
And  the  answer  to  that  conundrum  is  the  same  that 
serves  for  the  question  concerning  the  hackneyed  snow* 
ball  in  the  Inferno.  Blessington  swept  Marguerite  off 
her  feet,  bore  her.  away  from  the  protesting  captain 
and  installed  her  in  a  mansion  of  her  own. 

Then,  too  late,  came  the  happy  event  for  which  Jen- 
kins and  Marguerite  had  so  optimistically  been  look- 
ing. In  October,  1817,  Captain  Maurice  St.  Leger 


212  STORIES     OF     THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

Farmer  joined  some  boon  companions  in  an  all-night 
orgy  in  the  upper  room  of  a  pothouse.  Farmer  waxed 
so  much  drunker  than  usual  that  he  mistook  the  long 
window  of  the  room  for  the  door.  Bidding  his  friends 
good-by,  he  strolled  out  of  the  window  into  space. 
Being  a  heavier-than-air  body,  in  spite  of  the  spirits 
that  buoyed  him  up,  he  drifted  downward  into  the 
courtyard  below,  breaking  his  miserable  neck. 

Marguerite  was  free.  Jenkins  hastened  to  her  and 
besought  her  to  marry  him,  offering  her  an  honorable 
name  and  a  place  in  the  world,  and  pointing  out  to  her 
how  much  better  off  she  would  be  in  the  long  run  as 
Mrs.  Captain  Jenkins  than  as  the  brevet  bride  of  a 
dissolute  earl. 

But  Blesslngton  had  by  this  time  become  the  helpless 
thrall  of  Marguerite's  charm.  As  soon  as  he  heard  of 
Farmer's  death,  he  whisked  her  off  to  church  and  mar- 
ried her.  And,  by  way  of  doing  all  things  handsomely, 
he  soothed  the  disconsolate  Jenkins*  feelings  with  a 
nfty-thousand-dollar  check;  thereby  securing  firm  title 
to  the  good  will  and  fixtures  of  the  previous  tenant  of 
his  wife's  heart- 

The  earl  took  his  new  wife  to  his  ancestral  home,  at 
Mountjoy  Forest.  And  there  the  couple  kept  open 
house,  spending  money  like  drunken  sailors,  and  hav- 
ing a  wonderful  time.  It  was  the  first  chance  Mar- 
guerite had  ever  had  for  spending  any  large  amount  of 
money.  She  so  well  improved  her  opportunities  along 
this  line,  and  got  such  splendid  results  therefrom,  that 


"THE  MOST  GORGEOUS  LADY  BLESSINGTON"         213 

she  was  nicknamed  by  a  flowery  Irish  admirer  "the 
most  gorgeous  Lady  Blessington."  And  the  name 
stuck  to  her,  to  her  delight,  all  through  life. 

Blessington  had  always  been  extravagant.  Now, 
goaded  on  by  Marguerite,  he  proceeded  to  make  the 
Prodigal  Son  look  like  Gaspard  the  Miser.  One  of  his 
lesser  expenditures  was  the  building  of  a  theater  on  his 
own  estate,  that  he  and  Marguerite  might  satisfy  to  the 
full  their  love  for  amateur  theatricals. 

At  this  theater  they  and  their  friends  were  the  only 
performers,  and  their  friends  were  the  only  spectators. 
The  performances  must  have  been  gems  of  histrionic 
and  literary  excellence,  and  a  rare  delight  to  every  one 
concerned.  It  would  have  been  worth  walking  bare- 
foot for  miles  to  witness  one  of  them. 

For  the  actors  were  bound  by  a  list  of  hard-and-fast 
rules  devised  and  written  out  by  Lord  Blessington  him- 
self. You  may  judge  the  rest  of  these  rules  by  the  first, 
which  read: 

Every  gentleman  snail  be  at  liberty  to  avail  himself  of  the 
words  of  the  author,  in  case  his  own  invention  fails  him. 

One's  heart  warms  to  the  genius  who  could  frame 
that  glorious  rule  for  stage  dialogue. 

But  Marguerite  was  of  no  mind  to  be  mured  up  in 
an  Irish  country  house,  with  perhaps  an  occasional  trip 
to  Dublin.  She  had  begun  to  taste  life,  and  she  found 
the  draft  too  sweet  to  be  swallowed  in  sips.  She  made 


214  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER- WOMEN 

filessington  take  a  house  in  St.  James'  Square,  in  Lon- 
don- 
There,  for  the  next  three  years,  she  was  the  reigning 
beauty  of  the  capital.  Her  salons  were  the  most  bril- 
liant spots  in  the  London  season.  Her  loveliness  made 
her  and  her  home  a  center  of  admiration. 

She  had  more  than  good  looks;  more,  even,  than 
charm.  She  had  brains,  and  she  had  true  Irish  wit;  a 
wit  that  flashed  and  never  stung.  She  had,  too,  the 
knack  of  bringing  out  the  best  and  brightest  elements 
in  everyone  around  her.  So,  while  men  adored  her, 
women  could  not  bring  themselves  to  hate  her. 

She  was  in  her  element,  there  in  London.  But  Bles- 
sington  was  not  in  his.  He  enjoyed  it  all;  but  he  was 
no  longer  young,  and  he  had  led  a  lightning-rapid  life. 
So,  though  he  was  ever  a  willing  performer,  the  merci- 
less pace  began  to  tell  on  him. 

Marguerite  was  quick  to  notice  this.  And  she  sug- 
gested that  a  nice,  long,  lazy  tour  of  the  Continent 
might  brace  him  up.  Marguerite's  lightest  suggestions 
were  her  husband's  laws.  So  to  the  Continent  they 
went,  and  London  mourned  them. 

They  set  off  in  August,  1 822.  "No  Irish  nobleman," 
says  one  biographer,  "and  certainly  no  Irish  king,  ever 
set  out  on  his  travels  with  such  a  retinue  of  servants, 
with  so  many  vehicles  and  appliances  of  all  kinds  to 
ease,  to  comfort,  and  the  luxurious  enjoyment  of 
travel." 

They  planned  to  go  by  easy  stages,  stopping  wher- 


"THE  MOST  GORGEOUS  LADY  CLESSIXGTON"         215 

ever  they  chose  and  for  as  long  as  the  fancy  held  them. 
They  traveled  in  a  way  a  modern  pork-king  might 
envy. 

One  day  in  Paris,  at  the  races,  Lady  Blessington 
exclaimed : 

"There  is  the  handsomest  man  I  have  ever 
seen!" 

One  of  the  throng  of  adorers  hanging  about  the 
Blessington  box  confessed  to  knowing  the  stranger, 
and  he  was  accordingly  sent  off  posthaste  to  bring  the 
"handsomest  man"  to  the  box.  The  personage  who 
was  so  lucky  as  to  draw  forth  this  cry  of  admiration 
from  Marguerite  was  at  that  time  but  eighteen  years 
old.  Yet  already  he  was  one  of  the  most  noted — or 
notorious — men-about-town  in  all  Europe. 

He  was  Alfred  Guillaume  Gabriel,  Count  d'Orsay, 
a  typical  Ouida  hero.  He  was  six  feet  in  height,  with 
broad  shoulders,  small  hands  and  feet,  hazel  eyes,  and 
chestnut  hair.  He  was  an  all-round  athlete — could 
ride,  fence,  box,  skate,  shoot, — and  so  on,  through  the 
whole  list  of  sports.  He  was  a  brilliant  conversation- 
alist. He  could  draw.  He  could  paint.  He  was  a 
sculptor.  And  at  none  of  these  things  was  he  an  ama- 
teur, but  as  good  as  most  front-rank  professionals.  He 
was  later  to  win  fame  as  the  premier  man  of  fashion 
of  the  period.  A  once  celebrated  book,  "The  Complete 
Dandy,"  had  d'Orsay  for  its  hero.  Everybody  who 
came  in  touch  with  the  youthful  paragon  fell  victim 
to  his  magnetism,  and  even  Lord  Blessington — who 


216  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

should  have  been  wise  enough  to  see  what  was  coming 
— was  no  exception. 

Young  D'Orsay,  at  Marguerite's  instigation,  was  in- 
vited to  go  along  with  the  Blessingtons  on  the  rest  of 
their  travels.  He  accepted.  This  meant  his  resigna- 
tion from  his  regiment,  which  was  at  that  moment  un- 
der orders  to  leave  France  to  invade  Spain.  He  threw 
over  his  military  career  without  a  qualm.  He  had  fallen 
in  love  at  sight  with  "the  most  gorgeous  Lady  Bless- 
ington,"  who  was  fourteen  years  his  senior.  And,  at 
sight,  she  had  fallen  in  love  with  him.  It  was  the  love 
of  her  life- 

The  party  moved  on  to  Genoa.  Here  they  met  Lord 
Byron,  who  had  found  England  a  chilly  abiding  place, 
after  the  disgraceful  affair  that  had  parted  him  from 
his  wife.  Byron  was  charmed  by  Lady  Blessington's 
beauty  and  cleverness,  and  spent  a  great  deal  of  time 
with  the  Blessington  party  of  tourists. 

D'Orsay  he  liked  immensely,  once  referring  to  him 
as  "a  Greek  god  returned  to  earth."  Marguerite  he 
frankly  adored.  And — so  far  as  one  knows — that  was 
all  the  good  it  did  him.  With  a  wonder  youth  of  the 
D'Orsay  type  ever  at  her  side,  Lady  Blessington  was 
not  likely  to  lose  her  sophisticated  heart  to  a  middle- 
aged,  lame  man,  whose  power  over  women  was  at  this 
time  largely  confined  to  girls  in  their  teens.  But  Byron 
was  the  greatest  living  poet,  as  well  as  the  greatest 
living  charlatan.  And  Marguerite  consented  to  be 
amused,  in  desultory  fashion,  by  his  stereotyped  form 


"THE  MOST  GORGEOUS  LADY  BLESSINGTON"         217 

of  heart  siege;  even  though  his  powers  of  attack  were 
no  longer  sufficient  to  storm  the  citadel. 

Still,  the  time  passed  pleasantly  enough  at  Genoa; 
and  Byron  salved  his  bruised  vanity  by  wheedling  Lord 
Biessington  into  buying  his  yacht — a  boat  that  the  poet 
had  long  and  vainly  tried  to  get  rid  of.  Faring  better 
with  "my  lord"  than  with  "my  lady,"  he  sold  the  boat 
at  a  fancy  figure. 

There  was  a  farewell  banquet,  at  which  he  drank 
much.  Then  the  Blessingtons  and  D'Orsay  departed 
from  Genoa — on  the  white-elephant  yacht.  And 
Byron  stood  on  the  quay  and  wept  aloud  as  they 
sailed  off. 

They  went  to  Rome.  But  the  Eternal  City  somehow 
did  not  appeal  to  Lady  Biessington.  So  they  gave  it 
what  would  now  be  vulgarly  termed  "the  once  over," 
and  passed  on  to  Naples.  Here,  Marguerite  was  de- 
lighted with  everything.  The  trio  took  a  Naples  house, 
and  lived  there  for  two  and  a  half  years- 

The  mansion  Lord  Biessington  rented  was  the  Pal- 
azzo Belvidere — which  cost  him  an  enormous  sum. 
But,  like  an  automobile,  the  initial  price  was  the  small- 
est item  of  its  expense.  Marguerite,  perhaps  to  atone 
to  herself  for  the  squalor  of  her  rickety  girlhood  home, 
declared  the  place  would  not  be  fit  to  live  in  until  it 
had  been  refitted  according  to  her  ideas.  Her  ideas 
cost  a  fortune  to  carry  out.  But  when  at  last  the  work 
was  done,  she  wrote  that  the  palazzo  was  "one  of  the 
most  delicious  retreats  in  the  world."  She  also  hit  on 


218  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

a  thoroughly  unique,  if  costly,  scheme  for  sight-seeing. 
por  example,  when  she  visited  Herculaneum,  it  was 
V/ith  the  archaeologist,  Sir  William  Gell,  as  guide. 
When  she  went  to  museums  and  art  galleries,  she  took 
Along  as  showman  such  celebrities  as  Unwin,  the  pain- 
ter, Westmacott,  the  sculptor,  or  the  antiquary,  Milli- 
gan.  And  when  she  visited  the  observatory,  it  was 
under  the  guidance  of  Sir  John  Herschel  and  the 
Italian  astronomer  Piazzi.  More  than  one  of  these 
notables  sighed  hopelessly  for  her  love. 

From  Naples  the  party  went  to  Florence-  Here 
Walter  Savage  Landor  met  Marguerite.  And  he  was 
little  behind  Byron  in  his  appreciation  of  her  charms. 

By  this  time — nay,  long  before  this  time — people 
had  begun  to  talk,  and  to  talk  quite  distinctly.  Mar- 
guerite did  not  care  to  be  the  butt  of  international  gos- 
sip, so  she  enlisted  her  husband's  aid  in  an  effort  to 
silence  the  scandalous  tongues.  Blessington's  mode  of 
doing  this  was  highly  characteristic  of  the  most  eccen- 
tric man  living.  He  promptly  offered  to  make  D'Or- 
say  his  heir,  if  the  latter  would  marry  Lord  Blessing- 
ton's  fifteen-year-old-daughter,  the  earl's  only  living 
child  by  his  first  wife.  D'Orsay  did  not  object.  It 
mattered  little  to  him  whom  he  married.  The  girl  was 
sent  for  to  come  to  Florence,  and  there  she  and  D'Or- 
say were  made  man  and  wife. 

The  trio  thus  enlarged  to  a  quartet,  all  hands  next 
set  off  for  Paris.  Lady  Blessington  learned  that  the 
house  of  Marechal  Ney  was  vacant,  and  she  made 


"THE  MOST  GORGEOUS  LADY  BLESSINGTON" 

her  husband  take  it  at  a  staggering  rental.  And  again 
she  was  not  satisfied  until  the  place  had  been  done 
over  from  top  to  bottom.  The  job  was  finished  in  three 
days,  the  army  of  workmen  receiving  triple  pay  for 
quadruple  speed.  Lady  Blessington's  own  room  was 
designed  by  her  husband.  He  would  not  allow  her 
to  see  it  until  everything  was  in  readiness  for  her.  This 
is  her  own  description  of  it: 

The  bed,  •which  is  silvered  instead  of  gilt,  rests  on  the  backs 
of  two  large  silver  swans,  so  exquisitely  sculptured  that  every 
feather  is  in  alto-relievo,  and  looks  nearly  as  fleecy  as  those  of 
a  living  bird.  The  recess  in  which  it  is  placed  is  lined  with 
white  fluted  silk,  bordered  with  blue  embossed  lace;  and  from 
the  columns  that  support  the  frieze  of  the  recess,  pale-blue  silk 
curtains,  lined  with  white,  are  hung;  which,  when  drawn,  con- 
ceal the  recess  altogether.  ...  A  silvered  sofa  has  been 
made  to  fit  the  side  of  the  room  opposite  the  fireplace. 

Pale-blue  carpets,  silver  lamps,  ornaments  silvered  to  corre- 
spond. .  .  .  The  salle  de  bain  is  draped  with  white  muslin 
trimmed  with  lace.  .  .  .  The  bath  is  of  white  marble, 
inserted  in  the  floor,  with  which  its  surface  is  level.  On  the 
ceiling  a  painting  of  Flora  scattering  flowers  with  one  hand, 
while  from  the  other  is  suspended  an  alabaster  lamp  in  the 
form  of  a  lotus. 

It  was  in  this  house  that  Lord  Blessington  died,  of 
apoplexy,  in  1829;  perhaps  after  a  glimpse  of  the  bills 
for  renovating  the  place. 

Marguerite,  on  his  death,  was  left  with  a  jointure  in 
his  estate — which  estate  by  this  time  had  dwindled  to 


220  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

fifty  thousand  dollars  per  annum.  Her  sole  share  of  it 
was  seven-thousand-five-hundred  dollars  a  year,  and 
the  Blessington  town  house  in  London. 

All  along,  D'Orsay  and  his  wife  had  been  living  with 
the  Blessingtons.  When  Lady  Blessington  came  back 
to  England,  they  accompanied  her,  and  the  three  took 
up  their  odd  form  of  life  together  at  Gore  House, 
in  Kensington — Albert  Hall  now  stands  on  its  site — 
for  Marguerite  could  not  afford  to  keep  up  the  Bles- 
sington mansion. 

She  tried  to  eke  out  her  income  by  writing,  for  she 
still  had  the  pen  gift  that  had  so  awed  her  brothers 
and  sisters.  One  of  her  first  pieces  of  work  was  a  book 
based  on  her  talks  with  Byron,  back  in  the  Genoa  days. 
The  New  Monthly  Magazine  first  printed  serially  this 
capitalization  of  a  dead  romance.  The  volume  later 
came  out  as  "Conversations  With  Byron."  And,  of  all 
Marguerite's  eighteen  books,  this  is,  perhaps,  the  only 
one  now  remembered. 

She  was  engaged,  at  two-thousand-five-hundred 
dollars  a  year,  to  supply  a  newspaper  with  society  items. 
Then,  too,  she  edited  "Gems  of  Beauty,"  a  publica- 
tion containing  portraits  of  fair  women,  with  a  descrip- 
tive verse  written  by  her  under  each  picture — straight 
hack  work.  Altogether,  she  made  about  five  thousand 
dollars  a  year  by  her  pen;  a  goodly  income  for  a 
woman  writer  in  her  day — or  in  any  day,  for  that 
matter. 

Among  her  novels  were   "Meredith,"    "Grace  Cas- 


"THE  MOST  GORGEOUS  LADY  BLESSINGTON"         221 

sidy,"  "The  Governess,"  and  "The  Victims  of  Society." 
You  have  never  read  any  of  them,  I  think.  If  you  tried 
to,  as  did  I,  they  would  bore  you  as  they  bored  me. 
They  have  no  literary  quality;  and  their  only  value  is 
in  their  truthful  depiction  of  the  social  life  of  her 
times. 

She  did  magazine  work,  too,  and  wrote  for  such 
chaste  publications  as  Friendship's  Offering,  The  Amu- 
let, Keepsakes,  and  others  of  like  mushiness  of  name 
and  matter. 

Once  more  her  salons  were  the  talk  of  all  England, 
and  once  more  the  best  men  crowded  to  them.  But  no 
longer  did  the  best  women  frequent  the  Blessington 
receptions.  The  scandal  that  had  been  hushed  by 
the  sacrifice  of  the  earl's  daughter  to  a  man  who  loved 
her  stepmother  had  blazed  up  fresh  when  the  D'Orsays 
went  to  live  at  Gore  House  with  Marguerite.  And 
women  fought  shy  of  the  lovely  widow. 

It  is  one  of  the  mysteries  of  the  ages  that  so  canny  an 
old  libertine  as  Lord  Blessington  should  have  been 
hood-winked  by  D'Orsay  and  Marguerite.  There  is 
no  clew  to  it,  except — perhaps  he  was  not  fooled.  Per- 
haps he  was  too  old,  too  sick,  too  indifferent  to  care. 

And  when  D'Orsay' s  unhappy  young  wife,  in  1838, 
refused  to  be  a  party  any  longer  to  the  disgusting  farce 
and  divorced  her  husband,  the  gossip-whispers  swelled 
to  a  screech.  The  wife  departed;  D'Orsay  stayed 
on. 

There  is  every  reason  to  think  Marguerite  was  true 


222  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

to  her  young  "Greek  God."  But  if  so,  it  was  not  for 
lack  of  temptation  or  opportunity  to  be  otherwise.  In 
her  late  forties  and  early  fifties,  she  was  still  "the  most 
gorgeous  Lady  Blessington,"  still  as  lovely,  as  mag- 
netic, as  adorable  as  in  her  teens. 

Among  the  men  who  delighted  to  honor  her  salons 
xvith  their  frequent  presence — and  more  than  one  of 
them  made  desperate  love  to  their  hostess — were  Bui- 
wer,  Dickens,  Thackeray,  Sir  Robert  Peel,  Captain 
Marryat,  Brougham,  Landseer,  Tom  Moore,  Disraeli, 
and  many  another  genius. 

Disraeli — one  day  to  rule  British  politics  as  Lord 
Beaconsfield — was  at  that  time  merely  a  brilliant  poli- 
tician and  an  almost  equally  brilliant  novelist.  There 
is  a  story — I  don't  vouch  for  it — that,  piqued  at  Mar- 
guerite's coldness  toward  himself,  Disraeli  revenged 
himself  by  portraying  D'Orsay  right  mercilessly  as 
"Count  Mirabeau,"  in  his  "Henrietta  Temple." 

Landor  was  drawn  by  her  lure  into  returning  to 
England.  The  aged  Duke  of  Wellington,  too,  was  a 
guest  at  her  more  informal  "at  homes."  Marguerite 
used  such  influence  as  she  possessed  over  the  duke  to 
persuade  him  to  let  D'Orsay  paint  his  portrait.  So 
well  did  the  picture  turn  out  that  the  duke  cried  in 
delight: 

"At  last  I've  been  painted  as  a  gentleman!" 

To  the  Blessington  salons  came  an  American,  a  man 
whose  clothes  were  the  hopeless  envy  of  Broadway, 
and  whose  forehead  curl  was  imitated  by  every  Yankee 


"THE  MOST  GORGEOUS  LADY  BLESSINGTON"         223 

dandy  who  could  afford  to  buy  enough  pomatum  to 
stick  a  similar  curl  to  his  own  brow.  He  was  N.  P. 
Willis.  You  don't  even  start  at  the  name.  Yet  that 
name  used  to  thrill  your  grandmother.  Willis  was  a 
writer;  and  gained  more  temporary  fame  for  less 
good  work  than  any  other  author  our  country  has 
produced. 

During  a  tour  of  England,  he  was  fortunate  enough 
to  receive  an  invitation  to  call  on  Lady  Blessington. 
And  thereafter  he  called  almost  every  day.  He  fairly 
raved  over  her. 

"She  is  one  of  the  most  lovely  and  fascinating 
women  I  have  ever  known!"  he  wrote. 

Then  he  wrote  more;  he  wrote  a  story  of  something 
that  happened  at  one  of  her  soirees.  He  sent  it  to  an 
American  paper,  never  dreaming  it  would  ever  be 
seen  in  England.  But  the  story  was  reprinted  in  an 
English  magazine.  And  D'Orsay  showed  Willis  the 
door. 

Another  visitor  to  Gore  House  was  a  pallid,  puffy 
princeling,  out  of  a  job  and  out  of  a  home.  He  was 
Louis  Napoleon,  reputed  nephew  of  Napoleon  the 
Great;  and  he  was  one  day  to  reign  as  Napoleon  III., 
Emperor  of  the  French.  In  the  meantime,  exiled  from 
France,  he  knocked  around  the  world,  morbidly  won- 
dering where  his  next  suit  of  ready-made  clothes  was 
to  come  from.  He  even  visited  the  United  States,  for 
a  while,  teaching  school  at  Bordentown,  New  Jersey, 
and  sponging  for  loans  and  dinners  from  the  Jumels 


224  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

and  other  people  kindly  disposed  to  the  Bonaparte 
cause. 

Just  now  he  was  in  England,  living,  when  he  could, 
on  borrowed  money,  and  sometimes  earning  a  few 
shillings  by  serving  as  special  policeman  outside  of  big 
houses  where  dances  or  receptions  were  in  progress. 
Out  of  the  few  English  homes  open  to  the  prince  was 
Marguerite  Blessington's. 

Marguerite  and  D'Orsay  took  him  in,  fed  him,  lent 
him  money,  and  did  a  thousand  kindnesses  to  the  poor, 
outlawed  fellow.  You  shall  learn  in  a  few  minutes  how 
he  repaid  their  generosity. 

While  Marguerite  had  a  talent  for  writing,  she  had 
a  positive  genius  for  spending  money.  And  where 
talent  and  genius  clash,  there  can  be  only  one  final 
result.  Her  talent,  as  I  have  said,  brought  her  about 
five  thousand  dollars  a  year.  Her  income  from  her 
husband's  estate  was  a  yearly  severa-thousand-five- 
hundred  dollars  more.  But  how  couU  people  like 
Marguerite  and  D'Orsay  keep  abreast  of  the  social  cur- 
rent on  a  beggarly  twelve-thousand-five-hundred  dol- 
lars a  year? 

The  foregoing  is  a  question,  not  a  flight  of  rhetoric. 
It  has  an  answer.  And  the  answer  is:  they  went  into 
debt. 

They  threw  away  money;  as  apt  pupils  of  the  la- 
mented Earl  of  Blessington  might  readily  have  been 
expected  to.  When  they  had  no  more  money  to  pay 
with,  they  got  credit.  At  first,  this  was  easy  enough. 


"THE  MOST  GORGEOUS  LADY  BLESSINGTON"         225 

Tradesmen,  high  and  low,  deemed  it  an  honor  to  be 
creditors  of  the  all-popular  Dowager  Countess  of  Bless- 
ington,  and  of  the  illustrious  Count  D'Orsay.  And 
even  after  the  tradesmen's  first  zest  died  down,  the 
couple  were  clever  enough  to  arrange  matters  in  such 
a  way  as  to  keep  right  on  securing  goods  for  which 
they  knew  they  never  could  hope  to  pay. 

Stripped  of  his  glamour,  his  pretty  tricks,  and  his 
social  position,  D'Orsay  shows  up  as  an  unadulterated 
dead  beat,  a  sublimated  panhandler;  while  Marguerite's 
early  experience  in  helping  Shiver-the-Frills  ward  off 
bailiffs  and  suchlike  gold-seekers  now  stood  her  in 
fine  stead. 

They  were  a  grand  pair.  Their  team-work  was 
perfect.  Between  them,  they  succeeded  in  rolling  up 
debts  amounting  to  more  than  five-hundred-amd-thirty- 
five-thousand  dollars  to  tradesfolk  alone.  D'Orsay, 
in  addition  to  this,  managed  to  borrow  about  sixty-five 
thousand  from  overtrustful  personal  friends. 

Thackeray  is  said  to  have  drawn  from  them  the  in- 
spiration of  his  "Vanity  Fair"  essay  on  "How  to  Live 
on  Nothing  a  Year."  D'Orsay,  before  consenting  to 
let  his  wife  divorce  him,  had  stipulated  that  the  earl's 
daughter  pay  him  a  huge  lump  sum  out  of  the  Blessing- 
ton  estate.  He  was  also  lucky  at  so-called  games  of 
chance,  and  his  painting  brought  in  a  good  revenue. 
But  all  this  money  was  swallowed  up  in  the  bottomless 
gulf  of  extravagance. 

Little  by  little,  the  tradesmen  began  to  realize  that 


226  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

they  were  never  going  to  be  paid,  and  they  banded 
together  to  force  matters  to  a  crisis.  In  that  era,  debt 
was  still  punishable  by  imprisonment,  and  prison  gates 
were  almost  ready  to  unbar  in  hospitable  welcome  to 
Marguerite  and  D'Orsay. 

Like  Dick  Swiveller,  who  shut  for  himself,  one  by 
one,  every  avenue  of  egress,  from  his  home,  by  means 
of  unpaid-for  purchases  in  neighboring  streets,  D'Orsay 
discovered  that  it  was  no  longer  safe  to  leave  the 
house.  Officers  with  warrants  lurked  at  the  area  rail- 
ings of  Gore  House-  Tipstaves  loitered  on  the  front 
steps.  All  sorts  of  shabby  people  seemed  eager  to 
come  into  personal  contact  with  Alfred  Guillaume 
Gabriel,  Count  D'Orsay. 

On  Sunday  alone — when  the  civil  arm  of  the  law 
rests — did  the  much-sought-after  couple  dare  emerge 
from  the  once-joyous  house  which  had  grown  to  be 
their  beleaguered  castle.  No  longer  could  they  enter- 
tain, as  of  yore,  least  a  rascally  warrant-server  slip  into 
the  drawing-room  in  the  guise  of  a  guest. 

Finally,  the  net  tightened  to  such  an  extent  that 
D'Orsay  had  great  ado  to  slip  through  its  one  gap;  but 
slip  through  he  did,  and  escaped  by  night  to  France. 
Marguerite's  wit  arranged  for  his  escape.  And  the 
man  who  lately  had  disdained  to  take  a  week-end 
journey  without  a  half-dozen  servants  and  a  half  score 
trunks  was  forced  to  run  away  in  the  clothes  he  wore, 
and  with  single  portmanteau.  Marguerite  joined  him 
at  Boulogne,  little  better  equipped  than  he. 


THE  MOST  GORGEOUS  LADY  BLESSINGTON*'  227 

Oh,  but  there  were  heartbreaking  sights,  in  those 
days,  in  Boulogne,  in  Calais,  and  in  Havre!  English- 
men who  had  fled  their  own  country  for  debt  used  to 
haunt  the  French  seaboard,  as  being  nearer  their  own 
dear  land  than  was  Paris.  They  used  to  pace  the 
esplanades  or  cower  like  sick  dogs  on  the  quays,  strain- 
ing their  eyes  across  the  tumbled  gray  water,  to  glimpse 
the  far-off  white  cliffs  of  their  homeland.  They  would 
flock  to  the  pier,  when  the  Channel  packets  came  in, 
longing  for  the  sight  of  a  home  face,  dreading  to  be 
seen  by  some  one  who  had  known  them  in  sunnier 
days.  Sneered  at  by  the  thrifty  French,  denied  a 
penny's  worth  of  credit  at  the  shops,  they  dragged  out 
desolate  lives,  fifty  times  more  bitter  than  death. 

It  was  no  part  of  Marguerite's  scheme  to  enroll 
D'Orsay  and  herself  among  these  hangdog  exiles.  She 
had  ever  built  air-castles,  and  she  was  still  building 
them.  She  had  wonderful  plans  for  a  career  in 
France. 

She  and  D'Orsay  had  done  much  for  Louis  Na- 
polean  in  his  days  of  poverty.  And  now  Louis  Napo- 
leon was  President  of  France,  and  already  there  were 
rumors  that  he  would  soon  make  himself  emperor.  He 
was  the  Man  of  the  Hour.  And  in  his  heyday  of  pros- 
perity he  assuredly  could  do  no  less  than  find  a  high 
government  office  for  D'Orsay  and  pour  a  flood  of 
golden  coin  into  the  lap  of  "the  most  gorgeous  Lady 
Blessington." 

Let  me  save  you  from  suspense  by  telling  you  that 


228  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

Louis  Napoleon  did  nothing  of  the  sort.  Indeed,  he 
seemed  much  embarrassed  and  not  at  all  over-joyed 
by  the  arrival  of  his  old  benefactors  in  Paris.  He 
made  them  many  glittering  promises.  But  the  Bank 
of  Fools  itself  would  have  had  too  much  sense  to  dis- 
count such  promises  as  Louis  Napoleon  was  wont  to 
make. 

Soon  after  their  arrival  in  Paris,  Marguerite  learned 
that  creditors  had  swooped  down  upon  Gore  House, 
seizing  it  and  all  the  countless  art  treasures  that  filled 
it.  House  and  contents  went  under  the  hammer,  and 
brought  a  bare  sixty  thousand  dollars;  not  enough  to 
pay  one  of  the  D'Orsay-Blessington  debts. 

Marguerite  was  at  the  end  of  her  career.  She  was 
sixty  years  old;  her  beauty  was  going;  her  money  was 
gone.  She  had  ruled  hearts;  she  had  squandered  for- 
tunes; she  had  gone  through  the  "dark  spot,"  (ninety- 
nine  per  cent  of  whose  victims  sink  thence  to  the  street, 
•while  the  hundredth  has  the  amazing  luck  to  emerge 
as  a  Super- Woman. )  She  had  listened  to  the  love  vows 
of  men  whose  names  are  immortal.  And  now  she  was 
old  and  fat  and  banished.  Hope  was  dead. 

A  younger  and  stronger  woman  might  readily  have 
succumbed  under  such  a  crisis.  Certainly,  Marguerite 
Blessington  was  in  no  condition  to  face  it.  Soon  after 
she  arrived  in  Paris,  she  sickened  and  died. 

D'Orsay  had  loved  her  with  fairly  good  constancy, 
and  he  designed  in  her  honor  a  double-grave  mauso- 
leum of  quaint  design.  And  under  that  mausoleum, 


THE  MOST  GORGEOUS  LADY  BLESSINGTON 


229 


at  Chambourey,    she  was  buried.     Three  years  later, 
D'Orsay  was  laid  there  at  her  side. 

Super-woman  and  super-man,  they  had  loved  as 
had  Cleopatra  and  Antony.  Only,  in  the  latters'  day, 
it  was  Rome's  vengeance  and  not  a  creditor-warrant 
that  cut  short  such  golden  romances. 


CHAPTER  XI 

MADAME    RECAMIER 

THE  FROZEN-HEARTED  ANGEL 

PARIS~the  hopelessly  mixed,  sans-culotte-philoso- 
pher  new  Paris  society  of  1  793 — took  a  holiday 
from  red  slaughter  and  reflection  on  the  Rights 
of  Man,  and  went  to  an  odd  wedding. 

The  wedding  of  a  fifteen-year-old  girl  to  a  man  of 
nearly  fifty.  Probably,  even  in  that  less  bromidic  day, 
there  were  not  lacking  a  few  hundred  guests  to  com- 
mit the  ancient  wheeze  anent  May  and  December.  The 
girl  was  a  beauty  of  the  type  that  it  tightens  one's 
throat  to  look  at.  And  the  man  was  an  egregiously 
rich  banker.  So  Paris  deigned  to  be  interested; 
interested  even  into  momentary  forgetfulness  of  the 
day's  "List  of  the  Condemned"  and  of  Robespierre's 
newest  patriotic  murder  dreams. 

The  girl  bride  was  Jeanne  Francoise  Julie  Adelaide 
Bernard,  daughter  of  no  less  a  dignitary  than  the  Paris* 
receiver  of  taxes — a  mild-mannered  and  handsome 
man,  weak  and  stupid,  with  a  handsome  and  steel- 
eyed  wife,  who  was  neither  dull,  weak,  nor  good. 


MADAME      RECAMIER  231 

The  groom  was  Jacques  Recamier — by  profession  a. 
powerful  banker,  by  choice  a  middle-class  Lothario. 
His  father  had  sold  hats  at  Lyons.  Recamier  had  been 
an  intimate  friend  of  the  Bernards,  forever  at  their 
house,  since  a  year  or  so  before  Jeanne  had  been  born. 

As  the  wedding  party  stood  on  the  steps  of  the  Ho- 
tel de  Ville,  after  the  "civil  ceremony" — so  runs  the 
story — a  passing  man  halted  and  gazed  long  and 
closely  at  Jeanne,  in  dumb  admiration,  studying  every 
line  of  her  face  and  form.  The  gazer  was  a  painter, 
Greuze  by  name.  And  from  Jeanne  Recamier,  as  he 
saw  her  that  day,  he  drew  the  inspiration  for  the  won- 
derful "Jeune  fille"  picture  that  made  him  immortal. 

The  wedding  party  filed  into  a  line  of  waiting  car- 
riages. But  scarce  had  the  joyous  cavalcade  set  out 
on  its  short  journey  when  it  was  halted  by  the  passage 
of  a  truly  horrible  procession  that  just  then  emerged 
from  a  cross  street;  a  procession  made  up  of  scare- 
crow men  and  women,  hideous  of  visage,  clad  in  rags, 
blood  from  the  guillotine — around  which  they  had 
lately  gathered,  gloating — spattered  on  their  clothes 
and  unwashed  faces. 

In  the  midst  of  the  howling  and  huzzaing  throng 
was  a  chair,  carried  by  supports  on  the  shoulders  of 
eight  half-naked  sans-culottes.  And  in  this  lofty  chair 
crouched  the  most  hideous  figure  in  all  that  vile  gath- 
ering— a  dwarfish,  weirdly  dressed  man,  his  face  dis- 
gustingly marred  by  disease,  his  eyes  glaring  with  the 
light  of  madness. 


232  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN" 

Around  him  gamboled  the  mob,  screaming  blessings 
and  adulations,  strewing  his  bearers'  way  with  masses 
of  wilted  flowers,  niched  from  the  halies. 

Thus  did  Doctor  Jean  Paul  Marat  make  his  trium- 
phal return  home  that  April  day  from  the  Convention, 
escorted  by  his  worshipers — and  fellow  beasts.  Thus 
did  his  obscene  retinue  block  the  wedding  procession 
of  dainty  little  Jeanne  Recamier.  Jean  Paul  Marat — 
for  whose  shrunken  chest,  at  that  very  moment,  poor, 
politics-crazed  Charlotte  Corday  was  sharpening  the 
twenty-eight-cent  case  knife  she  had  just  bought. 

An  odd  omen  for  the  outset  of  married  life;  and 
vitally  so  to  the  little  new-wed  Recamier  girl,  who  had 
been  brought  up  amid  superstitions. 

Shall  we  glance  at  a  short  word  picture  of  Jeanne, 
limned  by  a  contemporary? 

"She  has  orange-tinted  eyes,  but  they  are  without 
fire;  pretty  and  transparent  teeth,  but  incapable  of 
snapping;  an  ungainly  waist;  coarse  hands  and  feet; 
and  complexion  that  is  a  bowl  of  milk  wherein  float 
rose  leaves." 

Let  me  add  to  the  sketch  the  established  fact  that, 
during  the  seventy-one  years  of  her  life,  no  man  so  such 
as  boasted  that  he  had  received  a  caress  or  a  love  word 
from  her.  But  don't  lose  interest  in  her,  please,  on 
that  account.  Dozens  of  men  would  blithely  have 
tossed  away  their  souls  for  the  privilege  of  making  that 
boast  truthfully.  Failing,  they  nicknamed  her  "the 
angel  of  the  frozen  heart."  Against  her,  alone,  per- 


MADAME     RECAMIER  233 

haps  of  all  super-women,  no  word  of  scandal  was  ever 
breathed.  (Chiefly,  it  has  been  claimed,  for  physical 
reasons. ) 

Let  me  touch,  as  brieflly  as  I  can,  on  a  story  at  which 
Madame  Lenormand,  her  own  cousin,  broadly  hints 
and  which  Turquan  openly  declares  true.  Says  the 
former,  among  other  and  closer  comments  on  the 
theme: 

"Madame  Recamier  received  from  her  husband  but 
his  name.  His  affection  was  paternal.  He  treated  as  a 
daughter  the  woman  who  carried  his  name." 

Says  Turquan: 

"She  was  Recamier's  daughter." 

And  so,  by  all  testimony,  she  was.  Years  before, 
Recamier  had  had  a  love  affair  with  Madame  Bernard ; 
an  affair  that  the  stupid  Bernard  had  condoned,  if 
he  had  known  of  its  existence.  Nor,  said  gossip  of 
the  day,  was  it  Madame  Bernard's  sole  indiscre- 
tion. 

Jeanne  had  been  born.  From  her  earliest  baby- 
hood, Recamier  had  all  but  worshiped  her.  Not  a 
day  had  passed  but  he  had  come  to  see  her.  He  had 
loaded  her  with  toys,  jewelry,  candy.  He  had  been 
her  fairy  godfather.  She  had  grown  up  calling  him 
"Daddy  Recamier." 

Then  came  the  Reign  of  Terror.  Old  Bernard's 
life  was  in  considerable  danger.  In  fact  he  used  to  go 
to  the  guillotine  daily  to  watch  executions,  "that  he 
might  become  used  to  his  fate."  Madame  Benard 


234  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

was  no  fit  guardian  for  a  young  and  incredibly  lovely 
girl  in  the  rotten  Paris  of  that  day. 

So  Recamier,  rich  and  powerful,  chose  the  surest 
means  to  safeguard  the  daughter  who  was  all  the  world 
to  him.  He  went  through  a  meaningless  "civil  cere- 
mony" with  her;  and  installed  her,  with  a  retinue  of 
servants,  in  one-half  of  his  big  house.  Then  and 
thereafter  she  was  Madame  Recamier  in  name  alone; 
Recamier  tenderly  watching  over  her,  giving  her  every 
luxury  money  could  buy,  and  observing  with  a  total 
absence  of  jealousy  her  innumerable  conquests. 

These  conquests  had  begun,  by  the  way,  even  be- 
fore Jeanne's  early  marriage.  When  she  was  but  thir- 
teen, a  young  man  named  Humblot  had  fallen  madly 
in  love  with  her.  To  keep  Jeanne  from  reciprocating 
his  flame,  she  had  been  packed  off  to  a  convent  school. 

Shortly  after  the  marriage,  the  Reign  of  Terror  sim- 
mered down  to  the  more  peaceful  if  more  corrupt  Di- 
rectory. Society  reassembled  on  its  peak,  after  the 
years  of  guillotine-aided  class  leveling.  And,  in  this 
heterogeneous  society,  Jeanne  blazed  forth  as  a  star. 
Says  Sainte-Beuve: 

"The  world  Madame  Recamier  traversed  at  this 
period  was  very  mixed  and  very  ardent." 

To  its  adoration  the  girl  bride  lent  an  amused  but 
wholly  impersonal  ear.  Vaguely  she  used  to  wonder 
why  men  wept  at  her  feet  and  poured  forth  their  souls 
in  noisy  love  for  her.  Their  antics  found  no  response 
in  her  own  untouched  heart.  Yet  she  found  them  in- 


MADAME      RECAMIER  235 

teresting,  and  therefore  in  a  demure  way  she  en- 
couraged them.  Not  that  such  encouragement  was 
really  needed. 

Presently,  out  of  the  chaos  of  social  and  political 
conditions,  arose  Napoleon  Bonaparte.  Yes,  I  know 
he  appears  unduly  often  in  this  series.  But  he  ap- 
peared unduly  often  in  the  lives  of  a  score  of  super- 
Avomen — Madame  Jumel,  Elizabeth  Paterson,  Madam- 
oiselle  Georges,  Countess  Potocka,  and  the  rest — and 
his  name  is  more  often  seen  in  all  history,  written  since 
1  790,  than  that  of  any  other  man.  So  be  patient  if  he 
crops  up  oftener  than  the  balance  of  power  seems  to 
call  for. 

Napoleon,  first  as  dictator  and  then  as  emperor, 
ruled  France.  As  a  young  man,  he  had  been  too  poor 
and  too  busy  to  glance  at  any  woman.  Now  in  his 
days  of  power  and — for  him — leisure,  he  amply  made 
up  for  such  early  defects.  And  presently  his  alternate- 
ly pale  and  jet-black  eyes  fell  upon  Jeanne  Recamier. 
Forthwith,  he  began  to  make  right  ardent  love  to  her. 

Napoleon,  once  and  only  once  in  all  his  strange 
career,  had  actually  lost  his  level  head  through  love 
and  had  been  carried  by  it  out  of  his  cool,  calculating 
self.  That  was  when,  as  a  lean,  half-starved,  hectic 
young  officer  of  artillery,  he  had  met  Josephine  Beau- 
harnais. 

She  was  a  Creole  widow,  much  older  than  he.  Much 
slush  has  been  written  of  her  and  her  wrongs.  His- 
tory, from  every  source,  tells  another  story. 


236  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

Napoleon  used  to  meet  Josephine  at  the  house  of 
the  director,  Barras,  where  she  held  a  somewhat 
equivocal  position.  Barras  had  begun  to  tire  of 
her.  Her  teeth  were  bad;  she  was  beginning  to 
•wrinkle  and  grow  sallow;  she  was  silly;  she  had 
absolutely  nothing  in  common  with  the  late  Mrs. 
Caesar. 

To  Napoleon,  though,  she  was  as  a  third-rate  show 
to  a  country  boy  who  had  never  before  visited  the 
theatre.  She  was  divine.  Barras  saw;  and  he  also 
saw  a  chance  to  rid  himself  of  a  burden  and  at  the 
same  time  to  attach  to  himself  a  growingly  useful 
friend. 

Barras  persuaded  Josephine  to  marry  Napoleon — 
whom  she  did  not  even  pretend  to  love — by  saying 
that  the  young  man  had  a  great  future.  Then,  as  a 
•wedding  present,  he  gave  Napoleon  command  of  the 
ragged,  mutinous  Army  of  Italy. 

Napoleon,  after  turning  that  army  into  such  a  fight- 
ing machine  as  the  world  had  never  before  known, 
thrashed  Italy  and  Austria  and  came  home  the  hero 
and  idol  of  the  hour — to  find,  beyond  all  doubt  or 
hope,  that  Josephine  was  unfaithful  to  him!  He  or- 
dered her  out  of  his  house.  She  wept.  Her  family 
wept.  Every  one  wept.  Every  one  pleaded.  Napo- 
leon shrugged  his  shoulders  and  let  her  stay.  But 
ever  thereafter  he  treated  her  with  mere  friendly  tol- 
erance. His  love  for  her  was  stone-dead.  And  he 
amused  himself  wherever  amusement  could  be  found. 


MADAME      RECAMIER  237 

Also,  when  it  suited  his  turn  in  after  years-  he  calmly 
divorced  her. 

"Lefebvre,"  said  Napoleon,  in  Egypt,  "what  is  Jo- 
sephine doing  at  this  moment?" 

"Weeping  for  your  return,"  promptly  babbled  the 
future  Duke  of  Dantzig. 

"Lefebvre,"  soul  fully  returned  Napoleon,  "you're  a 
fool  or  a  liar!  Or  both.  She  is  riding  a  white  horse 
in  the  Bois,  in  the  worst  kind  of  company  she  can  find 
at  such  short  notice." 

Men  of  rank  and  wit  were  choking  Madame  Re- 
camier's  salon  to  overflowing.  She  was  the  inacces- 
sible goal  of  a  hundred  Don  Juans'  ambitions.  Gran- 
dees of  the  old  and  the  new  regime  as  well — aristocrats 
of  the  noblesse — who  would  not  deign  to  visit  the  Tui- 
leries  while  the  Corsican  adventurer  held  sway  in  that 
house  of  kings — all  flocked  to  the  Recamier  home 
and  vied  with  one  another  to  do  Jeanne  honor. 

Her  beauty,  her  siren  charm,  her  snowy — or  frosty 
— virtue  were  the  talk  of  France.  What  more  natural 
than  that  Napoleon  should  seek  out  this  new  paragon; 
that  sheer  conceit  as  well  as  genuine  love  should  make 
him  burn  to  succeed  where  all  the  world  had  failed? 

Other  women — women  whose  houses  he  could  not 
have  entered,  seven  years  earlier,  save  as  a  dependent 
— were  making  fools  of  themselves  over  the  Man  of 
Destiny.  He  had  but  to  throw  the  handkerchief  for  a 
hundred  frail  beauties  to  scramble  for  its  possession. 
Irresistible,  perfect  in  power  and  in  the  serene  know- 


238  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

ledge  of  that  power,  he  deigned  to  make  lazy  love  to 
Jeanne  Recamier. 

She  was  not  used  to  lazy  love-making.  She  did  not 
understand  it,  but  took  it  for  a  mere  new  mannerism 
of  the  hypermanneristic  emperor.  Her  seeming  in- 
difference had  the  same  effect  on  Napoleon  as  might 
a  war  campaign  that  promised  grave  obstacles.  It 
turned  his  idle  fancy  to  keen  pursuit.  Madame  Re- 
camier failed  to  be  impressed.  Napoleon,  thinking 
he  must  be  mistaken  in  the  idea  that  any  living  woman 
could  fail  to  be  dazzled  by  his  attentions,  made  his 
meaning  quite  clear.  Only  to  meet  with  a  very  good- 
humored  but  extremely  definite  rebuff  from  his 
charmer. 

It  was  past  his  understanding.  He  stooped  to 
bribes;  offering  to  put  a  big  share  of  the  state  finances 
through  the  Recamier  bank,  and,  with  much  pomp  and 
ceremony,  announcing  the  appointment  of  Madame 
Recamier  as  one  of  the  Empress  Josephine's  ladies  in 
waiting. 

This  was  a  master  stroke — a  tour  de  force — a 
knock-out — anything  you  will.  For,  fat  and  curved- 
nosed  bankers  throughout  the  empire  were  yelping  for 
slices  of  the  state  finances.  And  the  post  of  lady  in 
waiting  was  one  for  which  nearly  any  woman  of  the 
court  would  gladly  have  parted  with  all  she  no  longer 
possessed. 

Then  came  a  shock;  a  rough,  jarring  shock;  a 
shock  worthy  to  be  administered  by,  instead  of  to,  the 


MADAME      RECAMIER  239 

Corsican  himself.  Madame  Recamier  coldly  refused 
the  glittering  offers;  declined  to  be  a  lady  in  waiting; 
and  gave  Napoleon  to  understand,  in  terms  he  could 
not  mistake,  that  she  wanted  nothing  from  him  except 
unadulterated  absence. 

It  was  probably  the  emperor's  one  heart  rebuff. 

In  a  burst  of  babyish  fury,  he — the  ruler  of  France 
and  the  arbiter  of  Europe's  fate — crawled  so  low  as 
to  seek  revenge  on  a  harmless  woman. 

He  first  wrecked  the  Recamier  bank,  driving  old 
Recamier  to  the  verge  of  ruin.  Then  he  trumped 
up  an  asinine  charge  of  treason  or  les  majeste  or 
something  equally  absurd,  against  Jeanne.  And  on  the 
strength  of  it,  he  banished  her  from  Paris. 

It  was  a  revenge  well  worthy  the  eccentric  who 
could  rule  or  ruin  half  of  Europe  by  a  single  convolu- 
tion of  his  demigod  brain;  or  could  screech  in  impotent 
fury  at  a  valet  for  getting  the  wrong  part  in  his  thin  hair. 

From  Paris  went  the  Recamiers;  the  banker  seek- 
ing gently  to  console  his  unhappy  wife  for  the  ruin  she 
had  so  innocently  wrought;  and  to  build  up  for  her, 
bit  by  bit,  a  new  fortune  to  replace  the  lost  one.  Never 
by  word  or  look  did  he  blame  her.  And  speedily  he 
amassed  enough  money  to  supply  her  again  with  the 
luxuries  she  loved. 

To  Lyons,  the  old  home  of  both  of  them,  they  went; 
thence  to  Rome,  and  then  to  Naples.  In  Italy,  Jeanne 
met  once  more  her  dearest  woman  friend ;  a  ludicrously 
homely  woman  with  the  temper  of  a  wet  cat  and  a 


240  STORIES     OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

tongue  sharp  enough  to  shave  with;  a  complete  foil, 
mentally  and  facially,  for  her  bosom  friend,  Jeanne. 

This  miracle  of  homeliness  was  Madame  de  Stael, 
author  and  futile  conspirator.  For  exercising  the  latter 
accomplishment,  she  had  been  banished,  like  Jeanne, 
from  Paris.  So  ugly  was  Madame  de  Stael  that  when 
she  once  said  to  an  ill-favored  man: 

"You  abuse  the  masculine  prerogative  of  homeli- 
ness," her  hearers  laughed — at  her,  not  at  her  victim. 

In  Italy,  too,  Jeanne  met  Prince  Augustus  of  Prussia, 
prince-royal  and  man  of  distinction  and  wealth.  They 
met  at  a  reception.  Madame  Recamier  and  Madame 
de  Stael  were  seated  side  by  side  on  a  sofa.  After 
the  introductions,  Prince  Augustus  seated  himself  be- 
tween them,  remarking  airily: 

"I  find  myself  placed  between  Wit  and  Beauty." 

"And  possessing  neither,"  commented  Madame  de 
Stael,  with  her  wonted  courtesy. 

The  prince,  from  that  inauspicious  start,  became  the 
infatuated  slave  of  Madame  Recamier.  He  worshiped 
the  ground  she  trod.  He  made  no  secret  of  his  de- 
votion. 

In  those  days  the  title  of  prince-royal  carried  real 
weight,  and  the  gulf  between  prince  and  commoner 
was  well-nigh  unbridgeable.  Love  made  Prince 
Augustus  waive  all  this  disparity.  The  fact  that 
Madame  Recamier  was  a  mere  commoner  grew  to 
mean  nothing  to  him.  At  the  risk  of  disgrace  at  home 
and  of  possible  loss  of  rank  and  fortune,  the  prince 


MADAME      RECAMIER  241 

entreated  Jeanne  to  divorce  Recamier  and  to  marry 
his  royal-blooded  self. 

It  was  a  brilliant  offer,  one  that  ninety-nine  com- 
moners out  of  a  hundred  would  have  seized  with 
alacrity;  for  it  was  not  a  morgantic  union  he  proposed 
— he  wanted  to  make  Jeanne  his  princess. 

The  prince  went  to  Recamier  and  frankly  stated 
his  wishes.  To  his  amaze,  instead  of  challenging  the 
wooer,  Recamier  at  once  agreed  to  let  Jeanne  get  the 
divorce,  on  any  grounds  she  chose — or  an  annulment 
of  their  marriage,  which  would  have  been  still  simplex 
— and  marry  Prince  Augustus. 

Always  impersonal  and  adoring  in  his  attitude 
toward  Jeanne,  Recamier  now  urged  her  to  secure  her 
own  best  interests  by  giving  him  up  and  becoming  the 
prince's  wife;  a  sacrifice  far  easier  to  understand  in  a 
father  than  in  a  husband. 

But  Jeanne  put  aside  the  offer  without  a  tremor  of 
hesitation,  turning  her  back  on  the  wealth  and  title  of 
a  princess  in  order  to  remain  with  the  bankrupt  old 
commoner  whom  the  world  called  her  husband.  For, 
again,  physical  reasons  intervened. 

Lucien  Bonaparte,  one  of  the  emperor's  several 
brothers,  was  another  ardent  wooer.  He  shone  in 
reflected  glory,  as  his  brother's  brother,  until  he  seemed 
quite  royal.  But  to  him,  as  to  all  the  rest,  Jeanne — 
after  a  wholly  harmless  and  pleasant  flirtation — gave  a 
decided  refusal. 

General  Bernadotte,   on  a  foreign  mission   for  thi. 


242  STORIES     OF      THE     SUPER-WOMEN 

emperor,  sought  her  out.  He  was  a  military  chief 
who  had  fought  like  a  hero  and  on  whom  court  honors 
had  since  fallen  thick.  He  sought,  soldier  fashion,  to 
carry  Jeanne's  icy  defenses  by  storm;  only  to  fail  as 
all  had  failed  and  to  go  home  grumbling  that  his 
majesty  had  done  well  to  exile  so  unapproachable  a 
beauty  before  she  had  a  chance  to  drive  every  man  in 
France  mad  with  chagrin. 

Benjamin  Constant,  too — cunning  statesman  of  the 
old  school — loved  her.  And  in  his  strange,  unfathom- 
able mind  she  found  a  certain  fascination;  the  more 
so  when  she  discovered  that  she  could  twist  that  mind 
to  her  own  purposes.  So,  instead  of  dismissing  Con- 
stant like  the  rest,  she  made  it  clear  that  she  did  not 
love  him  and  then  kept  him  as  a  friend. 

Strong  use  did  she  make  of  that  friendship,  too,  in 
revenging  herself  on  Napoleon  for  banishing  her.  Con- 
stant's mighty  if  tortuous  acts  of  statescraft,  just  before 
and  just  after  Napoleon's  downfall,  have  been  laid  to 
her  influence. 

Another  exile — General  Moreau,  Napoleon's  oft- 
time  rival  in  both  war  and  love — now  sought  to  win 
where  his  enemy  had  lost.  And  he  failed.  He  was 
the  same  General  Moreau  who  a  few  years  earlier  had 
paid  court  to  Betty  Jumel  and  had  given  her  as  a  love 
gift  a  huge  gilt-and-prism  chandelier  which  later  hung 
in  the  Jumel  mansion  in  New  York.  But  he  found 
Jeanne  as  cold  as  Betty  had  been  kind,  and  in  time  he, 
too,  departed,  hopeless. 


MADAME      RECAMIER  243 

The  next  victim  was  no  less  a  personage  than  the 
King  of  Naples.  He  was  Murat,  ex-tavern  waiter, 
peerless  cavalry  leader,  and  husband  of  Napoleon's 
shrew  sister,  Caroline  Bonaparte.  The  emperor, 
after  conquering  the  separate  Italian  states,  had 
placed  his  ex-waiter  brother-in-law  on  the  Neapolitan 
throne. 

When  Jeanne  reached  Naples,  Queen  Caroline  re- 
ceived her  with  open  arms  and  invited  her  to  be  a 
guest  at  the  palace.  Murat's  admiration  For  the  lovely 
visitor  was  undisguisable.  And — though  it  has  been 
denied  by  one  biographer  that  Jeanne  was  responsible 
for  his  treason — almost  at  once  after  her  arrival,  he 
began  to  intrigue  with  Napoleon's  enemies.  Form 
your  own  conclusions,  as  did  folk  of  the  time. 

Soon  afterward,  weakened  by  the  idiotic  Russian 
campaign,  Napoleon  was  set  upon  by  a  host  of  foes. 
Men  who  had  licked  his  boots  fell  over  one  another 
to  join  the  alliance  against  him. 

The  lion  was  wounded,  and  the  dog  pack  was  at 
his  throat. 

As  soon  as  Napoleon  had  been  hustled  off  into  exile, 
the  Recamiers  returned  to  Paris,  as  did  practically  all 
the  army  of  people  he  had  banished.  The  banker's 
fortune  was  looking  up,  and  they  could  live  in  some- 
thing of  their  old  style  there. 

Paris,  in  those  first  weeks  of  the  "Restoration,"  was 
as  full  of  kings,  emperors,  princes,  and  dukes  as  a  sub- 
way rush-hour  train  of  newspaper  readers.  One  could 


244  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

hardly  walk  a  block  without  stumbling  over  a  monarch 
or  a  commander-in-chief  or  a  princeling. 

The  heads  of  the  allied  armies  were  still  there, 
strutting  gallantly  about — they  would  have  run  up  a 
tree,  two  years  earlier — and  bragging  of  Napoleon's 
fall. 

There  was  Alexander,  Czar  of  Russia,  gigantic  and 
bearlike,  who  had  once  cringed  to  Napoleon,  then 
frozen  and  starved  him  in  the  Moscow  campaign,  and 
now  was  one  of  the  chiefs  of  the  alliance.  There,  too, 
was  Blucher,  who  had  tumbled  off  his  horse  at  Water- 
loo, but  who,  none  the  less,  had  done  more  than  is 
placed  to  his  credit  to  win  the  victory  that  forever 
crushed  Napoleon.  It  was  he  and  his  Prussians,  not 
Wellington  and  the  English,  who  really  won  Waterloo 
for  the  Allies. 

Other  sovereigns,  other  generals,  there  were,  too. 
And,  foremost  among  them,  a  long,  lean  Irishman,  with 
a  bony  face  and  a  great  hooked  beak  of  a  nose.  He 
was  Arthur  Wellesley,  Duke  of  Wellington,  titular  Vic- 
tor of  Waterloo  and  Man  of  the  Hour. 

The  Duke  of  Wellington  was  not  happily  married. 
I  think  no  retroactive  libel  law  can  attack  me  for  saying 
this,  for  he  himself  made  no  secret  of  it.  And  he 
was  far  from  being  an  exponent  to  stern  British 
morality. 

Indeed,  one  object  of  his  affections,  Miss  Jenkins, 
wrote  of  him  to  a  friend: 

"It  was  all  I  could  do  to  prevent  His  Grace  from 


MADAME      RECAMIER  243 

throwing  himself  on  his  knees  before  me  in  sinful  adul- 
ation." 

I  fear  he  would  have  roused  crass  horror  in  the 
bosom  of  the  mid-Victorian  matron  who,  on  seeing 
Shakespeare's  "Antony  and  Cleopatra,"  exclaimed: 

"How  different  was  Cleopatra's  home  life  from  that 
of  our  own  gracious  queen!" 

The  duke  fell  victim  to  Jeanne  Recamier's  charm. 
He,  the  official  Man  of  the  Hour,  became  a  fixture  at 
her  salons — but  for  a  very  brief  time.  One  day,  when 
he  was  calling  on  her,  a  number  of  other  guests  being 
present,  the  duke  made  some  would-be-witty  remark 
about  France. 

Jeanne  chose  to  interpret  his  words  as  a  slur  on  her 
beloved  country.  Roused  for  once  from  her  wonted 
gentleness,  she  ordered  Wellington  out  of  her  house. 

By  the  next  day  all  Paris  knew  that  Madame  Re- 
camier  had  shown  the  omnipotent  Duke  of  Wellington 
the  door.  And  all  Paris — which  adored  Jeanne  and 
hated  the  English  hero — went  wild  with  delight. 
Jeanne's  popularity  from  that  moment  was  bound- 
less. 

Soon  afterward,  Wellington  found  that  stern  duty 
called  him,  somewhat  hastily,  to  London.  Whither,  to 
his  disgust,  the  story  of  his  ejectment  from  Madame  Re- 
camier's salon  had  preceded  him. 

Canova,  the  premier  sculptor  of  his  day — he  who 
later  paid  such  assiduous  court  to  Elizabeth  Patterson 
— fell  in  love  with  Jeanne.  So  indelibly  was  her  wonder 


246  STORIES     OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

face  stamped  on  his  mind  that,  without  her  knowing  it, 
he  was  able  to  make  two  busts  of  her. 

When  the  busts  were  done,  Canova^who  was  con- 
stantly receiving  and  rejecting  offers  of  fabulous  sums 
to  make  portrait  busts — showed  her  his  labors  of  love. 
But  Jeanne's  beauty  went  hand  in  hand  with  vanity. 
She  thought  the  busts  over  which  he  had  toiled  so 
happily  did  not  do  her  justice.  And  without  a  word 
she  turned  away  from  the  inspection  and  left  the  studio. 

The  sharp  blow  to  his  pride  was  too  much  for  Can- 
ova.  He  dropped  her  acquaintance  forever;  being 
perhaps  the  only  one  of  Jeanne's  adorers  to  break  his 
allegiance  to  her  before  she  gave  the  word. 

Recamier  died.  Jeanne,  rich  and  still  gloriously 
beautiful,  received  shoals  of  proposals.  She  rejected 
them  all.  She  had  at  last  met  the  love  of  her  life.  In 
the  lives  of  all  these  super-women,  you  will  have  no- 
ticed, there  was  some  one  man  who  stood  out  supreme 
above  all  the  host  of  lesser  lovers;  idolized,  placed  on 
a  lofty  pedestal,  a  wealth  of  devotion  lavished  on  him. 

And  so  it  was  with  Jeanne  Recamier — although  the 
affair  from  first  to  last  was  starkly  platonic.  She  who 
had  laughed  at  an  emperor,  who  had  rejected  a  prince's 
hand,  who  had  turned  the  most  famous  man  in  Europe 
out  of  her  house,  lost  her  head  and  her  heart  to  a 
cranky,  bearlike  author-adventurer,  Francois  Auguste 
de  Chateaubriand.  Your  grandmother  read  and  wept 
over  his  American  novel,  "Atala." 

Chateaubriand    was    a    heartbreaker.       As    a    mere 


• 


MADAME      RECAMIER  247 

youth,  his  talent  for  transferring  his  allegiance  with 
lightning  speed  from  one  woman  to  the  next  had  won 
for  him  the  sobriquet  "L'InconstanL"  He  had  traveled 
in  the  American  wilderness,  living  among  Indian  tribes; 
had  hobnobbed  with  George  Washington,  to  whom 
he  had  brought  letters  of  introduction;  had  been  sent 
fleeing  for  his  life  from  France  during  the  Terror;  had 
been  a  favorite  of  Napoleon's  until  the  Corsican's 
tyranny  disgusted  him  into  turning  conspirator. 

Of  late  years  he  had  wandered  aimlessly  about 
Europe,  making  love  and  earning  a  scant  living  as  a 
painter  and  writer.  Sometimes  broke,  sometimes  flush, 
sometimes  acclaimed  as  a  genius,  sometimes  chased  as 
a  political  criminal,  sometimes  in  palaces,  sometimes  in 
jail — Chateaubriand  at  length  met  Jeanne  Recamier. 

From  the  first  they  loved  each  other.  On  neither 
side  with  it  a  crazily  passionate  adoration.  Rather 
was  it  the  full,  calm  devotion  of  mature  hearts 
that  seek  safe  harbor  after  many  and  battering 
storms. 

When  Recamier  died,  Chateaubriand  formally  asked 
Jeanne's  hand  in  marriage.  She  refused — for  reasons 
best  known  to  herself  and  her  physician.  But  they  re- 
mained, for  all  the  rest  of  their  lives,  faithful  and 
utterly  devoted  lovers. 

Chateaubriand  was  uncouth,  morbid,  vain,  bristling 
with  a  myriad  foibles  and  faults.  Jeanne,  very  gently 
and  tactfully,  undertook  to  cure  him  of  these  defects. 
With  tender  hands  she  gradually  remolded  his  way- 


248  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

ward,  eccentric  nature,  stripping  away  much  of  its 
dross,  bringing  out  its  cleaner,  nobler  traits. 

"You  have  transformed  my  character,"  he  wrote 
her.  "I  know  nothing  more  beautiful  nor  more  good 
than  you." 

When  Recamier  died,  in  1830,  Jeanne  was  a  little 
over  fifty.  Chateaubriand  was  sixty-two.  -  A  mature 
couple,  withal.  Yet  Jeanne  looked  scarce  thirty,  and 
Chateaubriand  was  still  in  his  late  prime. 

Again  and  again  he  pleaded  with  Jeanne  to  marry 
him.  Always  she  refused,  just  as  she  refused  a  host 
of  others,  even  in  her  mature  years.  Indeed,  she  re- 
ceived and  rejected  a  proposal  of  marriage  when  she 
was  seventy. 

The  rest  of  this  story  is  not  especially  romantic.  Per- 
haps it  may  not  interest  you.  For  it  has  to  do  with 
"the  breaking  up  of  things." 

The  Recamier-Chateaubriand  affair  went  on  like  an 
Indian  summer,  for  years.  Then,  as  old  age  reached 
out  for  him,  Chateaubriand's  eccentricities  cropped  out 
afresh.  He  fell  into  a  melancholy,  shut  himself  away 
from  the  world  that  was  at  last  growing  to  honor  him, 
became  a  recluse,  and  would  see  no  one  except  Ma- 
dame Recamier. 

His  melancholy  deepened  almost  into  mania.  He 
had  but  one  dream  of  life  left  in  his  heart — his  love  for 
Jeanne.  To  her  he  clung  like  a  frightened  child  to  a 
tender  mother. 

Then,  in  its  saddest  form,  old  age  laid  its  cold  hand 


• 


MADAME      RECAMIER  249 

across  beautiful  Jeanne's  orange-tinted  eyes,  and  she 
became  totally  blind.  Even  in  her  blindness  she  was 
still  lovely,  and  her  soul  lost  none  of  its  sweetness. 

Sightless,  she  still  guarded  and  sought  to  amuse  the 
cranky  old  man  she  so  long  had  loved ;  bearing  with  hie. 
once-imperious  temper,  which  had  now  rotted  into 
mere  whining  discontent;  humoring  his  million  whims; 
talking  softly  to  him,  in  his  brighter  moments,  about 
the  gleaming  past. 

The  melancholy  old  man,  lovingly  tended  and 
nursed  and  amused  like  a  baby  by  the  blind  old  woman 
who  had  been  the  reigning  beauty  of  the  world, 
lingered  on  for  several  years  longer. 

When  at  last  he  died,  Jeanne  mourned  him  as  never 
had  she  mourned  Recamier  or  any  other.  Chateau- 
briand's death  broke  her  heart.  It  broke,  too,  her  last 
tie  to  earth.  And  within  a  few  months  she  followed 
her  lover  to  the  grave. 

Thus,  at  seventy-two,  died  Jeanne  Recamier,  virgin 
heartbreaker,  whose  very  name  was  for  half  a  century 
the  synonym  for  absolute  beauty  and  flawless  purity. 
I  know  of  no  other  super-woman  whose  character  in 
any  way  resembles  hers. 

Which  was,  perhaps,  more  unlucky  for  the  other 
super-woman  than  for  the  men  who  loved  them. 


CHAPTER  XII 

LADY    HAMILTON 

PATRON  SAINT  OF  DIME-NOVEL  HEROINES 

SHE  was  the  mother  of  Gertrude  the  Governess,  the 
granddam  of  Bertha  the  Beautiful  Sewing-machine 
Girl,  the  earliest  ancestorette  of  lone,  the  Pride 
of  the  Mill;  she  was  the  impossibility  that  made  pos- 
sible the  brain  daughters  of  Laura  Jean.  She  was  the 
patron  saint  of  all  the  dime-novel  heroines;  she  was 
the  model,  conciously  or  otherwise — probably  other- 
wise— of  all  their  authors.  Because,  at  a  period  when 
such  things  were  undreamed  of,  even  in  fiction,  she 
rose  from  nursemaid  to  title. 

Even  in  the  books  and  plays  of  that  age,  the  born 
serving  wench  did  not  marry  the  heir.  In  the  highest 
literary  flights,  Bridget's  crowning  reward  was  to  wed 
Luke,  the  gamekeeper,  and  become  landlady  of  The 
Bibulous  Goat  or  The  Doodlethorpe  Arms.  Goldsmith 
was  eyed  askance  for  even  making  the  heroine  of 
"She  Stoops  to  Conquer"  pose  momentarily  as  a  lady's 
maid. 

Having  thus  tried  to  show  how  impossible  was  the 


LADY      HAMILTON  251 

happening,  let  me  work  up  by  degrees  to  the  happen- 
ing itself. 

She  was  a  Lancashire  lass,  Emma  Lyon  by  name. 
In  mature  years  she  dropped  the  "Lyon"  and  called 
herself  "Emma  Harte."  No  one  knows  why.  Lyon 
was  not  her  name;  neither  was  Harte,  for  that  matter. 
In  fact,  she  had  no  name;  her  careless  parents  having 
failed  to  supply  her  with  the  legal  right  to  one. 

Her  father  was  a  rural  farm  hand.  He  died  while 
Emma  was  a  baby.  Her  mother,  an  inn  servant, 
moved  later  to  Hawarden;  and  there  a  Mrs.  Thomas 
hired  Emma  as  nursemaid.  This  was  in  1777.  Emma 
was  thirteen.  She  had  already  learned  to  read — a  rare 
accomplishment  in  those  days  for  the  nameless  brat  of 
an  inn  drudge.  And,  as  nursemaid,  she  greedily  picked 
up  stray  morsels  of  her  little  charges'  education,  as  well 
as  the  manners  and  language  of  her  employers.  She 
learned  as  quickly  as  a  Chinaman. 

There  is  a  hiatus  in  the  records,  after  Emma  had 
served  a  year  or  so  in  the  Thomas  family.  One  bi- 
ographer bridges  the  gap  with  a  line  of  asterisks.  As- 
terisks, in  biographies  as  well  as  in  sex-problem  fiction, 
may  indicate  either  a  lapse  of  time  or  a  lapse  of  morals. 

Emma  reappeared  from  the  asterisk  cloud  in  Lon- 
don, where  she  was  nursemaid  in  the  house  of  a  Doctor 
Budd,  one  of  the  physicians  at  St.  Bartholomew's  Hos- 
pital. Doctor  Budd's  housemaid  at  that  time,  by  the 
way,  later  became  a  Drury  Lane  star,  under  the  name 
of  "Mrs.  Powell."  And  in  that  bright  afterday  she 


252  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER- WOMEN 

and  the  even  more  apotheosized  Emma  renewed  their 
below-stairs  friendship. 

For  some  reason  Emma  left  Doctor  Budd's  service 
rather  suddenly  and  found  a  job  as  helper  in  the  shop 
of  a  St.  James'  Market  mercer.  She  was  sixteen,  and 
she  was  gloriously  beautiful.  Her  figure  was  superb. 
Already  she  had  a  subtle  charm  of  her  own  which  drew 
to  her  feet  crowds  of  footmen,  shopboys,  apprentices, 
and  such  small  deer.  There  is  no  record  that  they 
one  and  all  were  sent  away  disconsolate. 

During  her  brief  career  as  helper  to  the  St.  James* 
Market  mercer,  Emma  chanced  to  attract  the  notice  of 
a  woman  of  quality  who  one  day  entered  the  shop. 
And  forthwith  she  was  hired  as  lady's  maid.  The 
girl  had  picked  up  a  mattering  of  education.  She  had 
scraped  from  her  pink  tongue  the  rough  Lancashire 
bur-r-r.  She  had  learned  to  speak  correctly,  to  ape 
the  behavior  of  the  solid  folk  whose  servant  she  had 
been.  Now,  from  her  new  employer,  she  was  to  learn 
at  firsthand  how  people  in  the  world  of  fashion  com- 
ported themselves.  And,  chameleonlike,  she  took 
on  the  color  of  her  gay  surroundings. 

Soon  she  could  lisp  such  choice  and  fashionable  ex- 
pletives as  "Scrape  me  raw!"  and  "Oh,  lay  me  bleed- 
ing!" and  could  talk  and  walk  and  posture  as  did  her 
mistress.  Trashy  novels  by  the  dozen  fell  into  her 
hands  from  her  mistress*  table.  Emma  devoured  them 
gluttonously  and  absorbed  their  precepts  as  the  human 
system  absorbs  alcohol  fumes. 


• 


LADY     HAMILTON  253 

Please  don't  for  one  moment  get  the  idea  that  there 
was  anything  profitable  to  a  young  girl  in  the  novels  of 
the  latter  eighteenth  century.  Perhaps  you  have  in 
mind  such  dreary  sterling  works  as  "Pamela,"  "Cla- 
rissa Harlow,"  "Sir  Charles  Grandison,"  and  others 
that  were  crammed  into  your  miserably  protesting  brain 
in  the  Literature  Courses.  Those  were  the  rare — the 
very  rare — exceptions  to  a  large  and  lurid  list,  which 
included  such  choice  classics  as  "Moll  Flanders,"  "Rox- 
ana" — both  of  them  by  the  same  Defoe  who  wrote 
"Robinson  Crusoe,"  and  whose  other  novels  would 
send  a  present-day  publisher  to  States  prison — "Pere- 
grine Pickle,"  "Fanny  Hill,"  "The  Delicate  Distress," 
"Roderick  Random,"  and  the  rest  of  a  rank-flavored 
multitude. 

Emma  reveled  in  the  joys  of  the  local  "circulating 
library,"  too;  one  of  those  places  that  loaned  books 
of  a  sort  to  cause  even  the  kindly  Sheridan  to  thunder 
his  famous  dictum : 

*'A  circulating  library  in  a  town  is  an  evergreen  tree 
of  diabolical  knowledge.  It  blossoms  through  the  year. 
And,  depend  on't,  they  who  are  so  fond  of  handling 
the  leaves  will  long  for  the  fruit  at  last." 

Much  reading  filled  Emma  with  wonderful  new  ideas 
of  life.  Incidentally,  it  made  her  neglect  her  work,  and 
she  was  discharged.  Her  next  step  was  to  become  bar- 
maid in  a  tavern.  While  she  was  there,  a  young  ad- 
mirer of  hers  was  seized  by  the  navy  press  gang.  Emma 
went  to  the  captain  of  the  ship  to  beg  for  her  swain's 


254  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

release.  The  captain  was  John  Willett  Payn,  aferward 
a  rear  admiral.  Payne  granted  the  lovely  girl's  plea. 
He  not  only  gave  her  what  she  asked,  but  his  own  ad- 
miration as  well.  Her  story  as  a  heart  winner  had 
begun. 

In  fiction,  the  gallant  captain  would  soon  have  tired 
of  his  lively  sweetheart  and  cast  her  aside.  But  Emma 
was  not  a  lowly  sweetheart.  She  was  a  super-woman. 
She  showed  how  much  stranger  than  fiction  truth  may 
be  by  deserting  Payne  for  a  richer  man.  First,  how- 
ever, she  had  wheedled  the  captain  into  hiring  tutors 
and  music  masters  for  her,  and  she  profited  vastly  by 
their  teachings. 

Her  new  flame  was  a  sporting  baronet,  Sir  Harry 
Featherstonhaugh,  of  Up  Park,  Sussex.  Sir  Harry  was 
an  all-round  athlete  and  a  reckless  horseman.  He 
taught  Emma  to  ride — "a  beggar  on  horseback?" — 
and  she  became  the  most  daring  equestrienne  of  the 
century.  He  taught  her  to  spend  money,  too.  And 
so  splendidly  did  she  learn  her  lesson  that  inside  of  a 
year  Sir  Harry  was  bankrupt. 

Perhaps  all  rats  do  not  leave  a  sinking  ship;  but, 
for  very  good  reasons,  one  never  hears  anything  fur- 
ther of  the  rats  that  don't.  The  rat  that  wishes  to 
continue  his  career  wases  no  time  in  joining  the  exodus. 
And  Emma  Lyon  did  not  disdain  to  take  example  from 
the  humble  rodent. 

There  seemed  no  good  reason  for  remaining  longer 
at  the  side  of  the  bankrupt  baronet,  to  add  to  his  cares 


. 


LADY     HAMILTON 

and  expenses.  So,  with  womanly  consideration,  ?he 
left  him. 

She  was  alone  in  the  world  once  more,  without  a 
shilling  or  a  friend;  equipped  with  education,  accom- 
plishments, wondrous  beauty,  and  charm,  but  with  no 
immediate  market  for  those  commodities.  It  was  the 
black  hour  that  comes  least  once  into  the  life  of  every 
adventuress. 

And,  in  this  time  of  need,  she  fell  in  with  a  beauty- 
culture  quack,  Graham  by  name. 

Graham  had  devised  a  rejuvenation  medicine — from 
Doctor  Faustus  down,  the  world  has  feverishly,  piteous- 
ly  seized  on  every  nostrum  advertised  as  a  means  of 
exchanging  age  for  youth — and  he  vowed  that  it  would 
make  its  users  not  only  young  again,  but  maddeningly 
beautiful.  As  an  example  of  "after  using,"  Graham 
exhibited  Emma  Lyon,  who,  he  said,  had  once  been  old 
and  ugly,  and  who,  by  a  course  of  his  elixir,  had  be- 
come youthful  and  glorious.  He  called  his  medicine 
"Megalanthropogenesis."  Women  who  heard  his  lec- 
ture took  one  look  at  Emma  and  then  bought  out 
Graham's  ready  supply  of  the  stuff.  The  charlatan  was 
an  artist  in  gaining  his  effects,  as  witness  a  report  of  the 
exhibition  in  which  Emma  posed; 


He  had  contrived  a  "Bed  of  Apollo,"  or  "Celestial  Bed," 
on  which,  in  a  delicately  colored  light,  this  exquisitely  beautiful 
woman,  nearly  naked,  was  gradually  unveiled,  to  soft,  soft 
music,  as  Hygeia,  goddess  of  health. 


256  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

Presumably  no  effort  was  made  by  any  eighteenth- 
century  Comstock  to  suppress  this  show,  and  all  London 
flocked  and  thronged  and  jostled  to  behold  it.  Apart 
from  the  normal  crowd  of  idlers,  came  painters  and 
sculptors  to  gaze  in  delight  on  the  perfect  face  and 
form  revealed  through  the  shimmer  of  rose-colored 
light. 

And  foremost  of  these  artists  was  a  freakish  genius 
toward  whom  was  slowly  creeping  the  insanity  that  a 
few  years  later  was  to  claim  him,  and  whose  stealthy 
approach  he  was  even  then  watching  with  horror.  He 
was  George  Romney,  who,  with  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds, 
divided  the  homage  of  England's  art  world.  Romney 
had  come  to  stare  at  Emma.  He  remained  to  worship. 
He  engaged  her  as  his  model,  and,  soon  or  late,  painted 
no  less  than  thirty-nine  pictures  of  her. 

"I  call  her  'The  Divine  Lady,'  "  he  once  wrote.  "For 
I  think  she  is  superior  to  all  womankind." 

The  black  hour  was  past.  Emma  Lyon's  fortune 
and  fame  were  secure.  Thanks  to  Romney,  she  was 
the  best-advertised  beauty  on  earth.  Conquests  came 
thick  and  fast,  not  treading  on  one  another's  heels,  but 
racing  abreast. 

Soon,  out  of  the  ruck  and  forging  far  ahead,  ap- 
peared Charles  Francis  Greville,  wit,  art  connoisseur, 
and  nephew  and  heir  of  the  famed  antiquary  diplomat, 
Sir  William  Hamilton.  Greville  cut  out  all  rivals,  Rom- 
ney among  the  rest,  and  won  Emma  for  his  own. 

Theirs  was  an  odd  love  affair.     For  here,  too,  Emma 


• 


LADY      HAMILTON  257 

gave  full  rein  to  her  craving  for  education.  And 
she  showed  for  the  first  time  just  why  she  was  so  eager 
to  be  highly  educated.  It  was  not  for  mere  learning's 
sake,  but  to  enhance  the  charm  that  gave  her  a  hold 
over  men.  She  cared  nothing  for  any  but  the  showy 
accomplishments.  She  already  had  a  fair  groundwork 
in  English  and  ordinary  school  studies.  She  made 
Greville  get  her  the  best  teachers  in  singing,  in  danc- 
ing, in  acting.  Perhaps  she  looked  forward  to  a  stage 
triumph,  but  more  likely  to  outshining  the  colorless 
bread-and-butter  women  of  her  day. 

Never  did  pupil  better  repay  the  pains  of  her 
teachers.  Her  voice  presently  rivaled  that  of  many  a 
prima  donna.  Her  dancing  was  a  delight.  It  was  she 
who  conceived  the  celebrated  "shawl  dance"  that  was 
the  rage  throughout  Europe  for  years  thereafter,  and 
that  still  is  used,  in  very  slightly  modified  form,  by 
premieres  danseuses.  But  acting  was  Emma's  forte. 
Says  a  contemporary  writer: 

With  a  common  piece  of  stuff  she  could  so  arrange  and 
clothe  herself  as  to  offer  the  most  appropriate  representations 
of  a  Jewess,  a  Roman  matron,  a  Helen,  Penelope,  or  Aspasia. 
No  character  seemed  foreign  to  her,  and  the  grace  she  was 
in  the  habit  of  displaying  under  such  representations  excited  the 
admiration  of  all  who  were  fortunate  enough  to  be  present  on 
such  occasions.  Siddons  could  not  surpass  the  grandeur  of  her 
style  or  O'Neil  be  more  melting  in  the  utterance  of  deep  pathos. 

In  this  heyday  of  her  prosperity,  Emma  hunted  up 


258  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

her  aged  and  disreputable  mother,  bestowed  on  her 
the  name  "Mrs.  Cadogan,"  and  settled  a  rich  pension 
on  her.  At  about  the  same  time,  too,  Emma  bade  a 
cheery  farewell  to  the  serviceable  name  of  Lyon  and 
took  to  calling  herself  Emma  Harte. 

Then  Greville  went  broke. 

In  his  new-found  poverty,  he  hit  on  a  plan  of  life 
foreign  to  all  his  old  ideas. 

He  decided  to  ask  his  rich  old  uncle.  Sir  William 
Hamilton,  to  pay  his  debts  and  settle  a  little  annuity 
on  him.  With  his  sum  as  a  means  of  livelihood,  he 
intended  to  marry  Emma,  and,  with  her  and  their  three 
children,  settle  down  in  some  cheap  suburb. 

How  this  appealed  to  Emma  history  forgets  to  say. 
Judging  by  both  past  and  future,  it  is  not  unjust  to 
suppose  that  she  may  have  been  making  ready  once 
more  to  emulate  the  ship-deserting  rat.  But  this  time 
she  did  not  need  to.  The  ship  was  about  to  desert  her 
— for  a  consideration. 

Greville,  full  of  his  new  nopes,  went  to  Sir  William 
Hamilton  and  laid  the  plan  before  him.  His  nephew's 
derelictions  from  the  straight  and  narrow  path  had  long 
distressed  the  virtuous  old  diplomat.  And  in  Gre- 
ville* s  financial  troubles  Sir  William  thought  he  saw 
a  fine  chance  to  break  off  his  nephew's  discreditable 
affair  with  Emma. 

He  offered  to  set  Greville  on  his  feet  again  if  that 
luckless  youth  would  drop  Emma's  acquaintance.  The 
enamored  Greville  refused.  Sir  W'lHam  insisted,  rais" 


LADY     HAMILTON  259 

ing  his  offer  of  financial  aid,  and  pointing  out,  with 
tearful  eloquence,  the  family  disgrace  that  a  mar- 
riage to  a  woman  of  Emma's  desolute  character 
must  cause.  It  was  all  quite  like  a  scene  from  a  mod- 
ern problem  play.  But  Fate,  her  tongue  in  her 
cheek,  was  preparing  to  put  a  twist  on  the  end  of  the 
scene  worthy  of  the  most  cynical  French  vaudeville 
writer. 

GrevilSe  resented  his  uncle's  rash  judgment  of  his 
adored  Emma,  and  begged  him  to  come  and  see  her 
for  himself,  hoping  that  Emma's  wonder  charm  might 
soften  the  old  man's  virtue-incrusted  heart.  Reluctant- 
ly, Sir  William  consented  to  one  brief  interview  with 
the  wicked  siren. 

At  sight  of  Emma,  Sir  William's  heart  melted  to 
mushiness.  He  fell  crazily  in  love  with  the  woman  he 
had  come  to  dispossess.  There  was  another  long  and 
stormy  scene  between  uncle  and  nephew;  after  which 
Greville,  for  an  enormous  lump  sum,  transferred  to 
Sir  William  Hamilton  all  right  and  title  and  good  will 
to  the  adorable  Emma  Harte.  And  Sir  William  and 
Emma  departed  thence,  arm  in  arm,  leaving  Greville 
a  sadder  but  a  richer  man.  What  became  of  the  three 
children  I  don't  know.  By  the  way,  Emma  had  taught 
them  to  call  her  "aunt,"  not  "mother." 

Will  you  let  me  quote  a  deadly  dry  line  or  two  from 
an  encyclopedia,  to  prove  to  you  how  important  a  per- 
sonage Sir  William  was,  and  how  *me  is  the  axiom 
about  "no  fool  like  an  old  fool"? 


260  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

Hamilton,  Sir  William,  British  diplomatist  and  antiquary 
(1730-1803),  student  of  art,  philosophy  and  literature.  From 
1764  to  1800  English  ambassador  to  the  Court  of  Naples. 
Trustee  of  British  Museum,  Fellow  of  the  Royal  Society,  vice 
president  of  the  Society  of  Antiquaries,  distinguished  member 
of  the  Dilettante  Club,  author  of  several  books.  Sir  Joshua 
Reynolds,  his  intimate  friend,  painted  his  portrait,  which  hangs 
in  the  National  Gallery. 

Sir  William,  who  was  home  on  leave  of  absence  when 
he  met  Emma,  took  her  back  with  him  to  Italy.  But 
before  they  sailed  she  had  prevailed  on  him  to  marry 
her. 

It  was  easy.     He  was  old. 

The  marriage  was  kept  secret  until,  in  1/91,  she  led 
her  husband  back  to  England  on  another  leave  of  ab- 
sence and  up  to  the  altar  of  St.  George's  Church,  where, 
on  September  6th  of  that  year,  they  were  married  all 
over  again;  this  time  with  every  atom  of  publicity 
Emma  could  compass.  She  was  then  twenty-seven ;  her 
husband  was  sixty-one. 

In  state  they  returned  to  the  court  of  Naples — the 
most  corrupt,  licentious,  false,  utterly  abominable  court 
in  ail  Europe.  If  you  will  glance  at  the  annals  of  the 
courts  of  that  period  you  will  find  this  statement  is  as 
true  as  it  is  sweeping.  On  her  earlier  visit,  as  the  sup- 
posed brevet  bride  of  the  ambassador,  Emma  had  been 
warmly  received  by  Marie  Caroline,  Queen  of  Naples 
and  sister  to  Marie  Antoinette  of  France.  Emma  and 
Marie  Caroline  were  kindred  spirits—  vj&cfe  is  perhaps 


LADY     HAMILTON  261 

the  unkindest  thing  I  could  say  about  either  of  them — 
and  they  quickly  formed  a  lasting  friendship  for  each 
other. 

Emma  was  glad  to  get  back  to  Naples.  Apart  from 
her  marriage,  her  visit  to  England  had  not  been  a  suc- 
cess. A  certain  element  in  London  society,  attracted 
by  her  beauty,  her  voice,  and  her  talent  as  an  actress, 
had  taken  her  up.  But  Queen  Charlotte  had  refused  her 
a  presentation  at  the  British  court,  and  the  more  reput- 
able element  of  the  nobility  had  followed  royal  example 
and  given  her  a  wide  berth.  English  society  under 
George  III.  was  severely  respectable — at  least  in  the 
matter  of  externals;  a  quality  it  was  soon  to  mislay, 
under  George  IV.  Hence  Emma's  joy  at  returning  to 
a  court  where  respectability  was  a  term  to  be  found 
only  in  the  dictionary. 

The  King  of  Naples  was  a  fool.  His  wife  was  the 
little  kingdom's  ruler.  Emma,  Lady  Hamilton,  became 
her  chief  adviser.  Writes  one  historian: 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  of  these  two  women  that  for 
years  they  wielded  the  destinies  of  Naples,  and  seriously  af- 
fected the  character  of  the  wars  that  ended  with  the  peace  of 
Europe  in  1815,  when  both  were  dead.  .  .  .  Both  were 
endowed  with  powers  of  mind  far  above  the  average  of  the:r 
sex;  both  exhibited  energy  and  understanding  that  inspired  their 
to  bold  and  decisive,  if  not  always  laudable,  deeds;  both  were 
as  remarkable  for  their  personal  beauty  as  for  their  self-reli- 
ance, their  knowledge  of  men,  and  their  determination  to  mako 
the  most  of  their  information.  To  say  that  Marie  Caroline 
loved  Lady  Hamilton  is  to  misstate  a  fact;  there  was  no  love  in 


262  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

the  royal  composition;  but  her  ungovernable  and  undying 
hatred  of  the  French  inclined  her,  no  doubt,  in  the  first  in- 
stance toward  the  •wife  of  the  English  ambassador,  and  the  sub- 
sequent devotion  of  the  favorite  secured  an  attachment  that  is 
confessed  and  reiterated  through  whole  pages  of  a  vehement 
and  overstrained  correspondence. 

Naples,  just  then,  was  between  two  fires.  There 
was  fear  of  a  French  invasion — which  arrived  on 
schedule  time — and  there  was  also  danger  that  England 
would  ruin  Neopolitan  commerce.  Emma's  white 
hands  were  at  once  plunged,  wrist-deep,  into  the  po- 
litical dough;  and  a  sorry  mess  she  proceeded  to  make 
of  it.  For  example,  the  King  of  Spain  wrote  a  confi- 
dential letter  to  his  brother,  the  King  of  Naples,  accus- 
ing the  English  government  of  all  sorts  of  public  and 
private  crimes  and  telling  of  Spain's  secret  alliance  with 
France.  The  king  showed  it  to  his  wife,  who  in  turn 
showed  it  to  Lady  Hamilton.  Emma  stole  and  secretly 
sent  the  letter  to  the  British  cabinet.  The  result  was 
a  bloody  war  between  England  and  Spain. 

About  two  years  after  Emma's  marriage,  an  English 
warship,  the  Agamemnon,  touched  at  Naples,  and  her 
captain  called  to  pay  his  respects  to  the  British  am- 
bassador and  to  deliver  a  letter  from  the  admiral  of 
the  Mediterranean  fleet.  After  a  few  minutes'  talk 
with  the  captain,  Sir  William  insisted  that  the  latter 
should  meet  Lady  Hamilton. 

He  bustled  into  the  drawing-room  to  prepare  Emma 
for  the  visitor's  arrival,  saying  excitedly  to  her: 


• 


LADY     HAMILTON  263 

"1  am  bringing  you  a  little  man  who  cannot  boast 
of  being  very  handsome,  but  who,  I  pronounce,  will 
one  day  astonish  the  world.  I  know  it  from  the  very 
words  of  conversation  I  have  had  with  him." 

On  the  heels  of  Sir  William's  announcement,  the 
"little  man"  came  into  the  room.  At  first  glance,  he 
scarcely  seemed  to  justify  Hamilton's  enthusiasm.  He 
was  clad  in  a  full-laced  uniform.  His  lank,  unpowdered 
hair  was  tied  in  a  stiff  Hessian  queue  of  extraordinary 
length.  Old-fashioned,  flaring  waistcoat  flaps  added 
to  the  general  oddity  of  his  figure. 

Sir  William  introduced  him  as  "Captain  Horatio 
Nelson." 

Lady  Hamilton  lavished  on  the  queer  guest  no 
especial  cordiality.  It  is  not  known  that  she  gave  him 
a  second  thought.  Nelson,  little  more  impressed  by 
the  super-woman,  wrote  to  his  wife  in  England  an  ac- 
count of  the  call,  saying  of  Lady  Hamilton — whose 
story,  of  course,  he  and  everybody  knew: 

"She  is  a  young  woman  of  amiable  manners,  who 
does  honor  to  the  station  to  which  she  has  been  raised." 

Yet  Nelson  had  unwittingly  met  the  woman  who  was 
to  tarnish  the  pure  glory  of  his  fame;  and  Emma  had 
met  the  man  but  for  whom  she  would  to-day  be  for- 
gotten. So  little  does  Fate  forecast  her  dramas  that 
at  the  first  meeting,  neither  of  the  two  immortal  lovers 
seems  to  have  felt  any  attraction  for  the  other. 

Not  for  five  busy  years  did  Nelson  and  Emma  Ham- 
ilton see  each  other  again. 


264  STORIES    OF    THE    SUPER-WOMEN 

Then  Nelson  came  back  to  Naples,  this  time  in 
triumph — a  world-renowned  hero,  the  champion  of  the 
seas,  Britain's  idol.  He  had  become  an  admiral,  a 
peer  of  England,  a  scourge  of  his  country's  foes.  Back 
to  Naples  he  came.  Part  of  him ;  not  all — for  victorious 
warfare  had  set  cruel  marks  on  him.  He  had  left  his 
right  eye  at  Calvi  in  1794,  and  his  right  arm  at  TenerifFe 
in  1  79  7.  He  was  more  odd  looking  than  ever,  but  he 
was  an  acclaimed  hero.  And  Naples  in  general  and 
Emma  Hamilton  in  particular  welcomed  him  with  rap- 
ture. 

He  was  in  search  of  the  French  fleet,  and  he  wanted 
the  King  of  Naples  to  let  him  reprovision  his  ships  in 
the  Neapolitan  harbor.  Now,  France  and  Naples  just 
then  happened  to  be  at  peace.  And,  by  their  treaty,  no 
more  than  two  English  warships  at  a  time  could  enter 
any  Neapolitan  or  Sicilian  port.  The  king's  council 
declared  the  treaty  must  stand.  Lady  Hamilton  de- 
cided otherwise. 

She  used  all  her  power  with  the  queen  to  have  the 
treaty  set  aside.  As  a  result  Marie  Caroline  issued  an 
order  directing  "all  governors  of  the  two  Sicilies  to 
water,  victual,  and  aid"  Nelson's  fleet.  This  order 
made  it  possible  for  Nelson  to  go  forth  reprovisioned — 
and  to  crush  the  French  in  the  Battle  of  the  Nile. 

In  the  first  rumor  of  this  battle  that  reached  Naples, 
Nelson  was  reported  killed.  Soon  afterward  he  ap- 
peared, alive  and  well,  in  the  harbor.  Here  is  his  letter 
to  his  wife,  telling  how  Lady  Hamilton  received  him 


• 


LADY      HAMILTON 


265 


on  his  return.  Nelson,  by  the  way,  had  been  married 
for  nearly  twelve  years.  He  and  his  wife  were  devoted 
to  each  other.  Judging  from  this  letter,  he  was  lament- 
ably ignorant  of  women  or  was  incredibly  sure  of  Lady 
Nelson's  love  and  trust.  Or  else  his  courage  was 
greater  than  that  of  mortal  husband.  He  wrote: 

Sir  William  and  Lady  Hamilton  came  out  to  sea  to  meet  me. 
They,  my  most  respectable  friends,  had  nearly  been  laid  up  and 
seriously  ill,  first  from  anxiety  and  then  from  joy.  It  was  im- 
prudently told  Lady  Hamilton,  in  a  moment,  that  I  was  alive; 
and  the  effect  was  like  a  shot.  She  fell,  apparently  dead,  and 
is  not  yet  perfectly  recovered  from  severe  bruises.  Alongside 
came  my  honored  friends.  The  scene  in  the  boat  was  terribly 
affecting.  Up  flew  her  ladyship,  and,  exclaiming:  "Oh,  God, 
is  it  possible?"  she  fell  into  my  arm,  more  dead  than  alive. 
Tears,  however,  soon  set  matters  to  rights;  when  alongside 
came  the  king.  ...  I  hope,  some  day,  to  have  the  pleasure 
of  introducing  you  to  Lady  Hamilton.  She  is  one  of  the  very 
best  women  in  the  world;  she  i&  an  honor  to  her  sex.  Her 
kindness,  with  Sir  William's,  to  me,  is  more  than  I  can  express. 
I  am  in  their  house,  and  I  may  tell  you,  it  required  all  the  kind 
ness  of  my  friends  to  set  me  up.  Lady  Hamilton  intends  writ- 
ing to  you.  May  God  Almightly  bless  you,  and  give  us  in  due 
time  a  happy  meeting! 

France  sought  revenge  for  the  help  given  to  Nelson's 
fleet,  and  declared  war  on  Naples.  The  Neapolitans, 
in  fury  at  being  dragged  into  such  a  needless  conflict, 
rose  against  their  dear  king  and  adored  queen — es- 
pecially against  their  adored  queen — and  threatened  to 
kill  them.  By  Lady  Hamilton's  aid  the  royal  family 


266  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER- WOMEN 

reached  Nelson's  flagship  and  took  refuge  there  from 
the  mob.  Sir  William  and  Lady  Hamilton  went  along. 
The  populace  looted  the  British  embassy  and  stole 
everything  of  value  Sir  William  owned — about  one 
hundred  and  ninety-five  thousand  dollars'  worth  of 
property  in  all.  Thus,  Hamilton  was  the  third  man 
who  had  lost  a  fortune  through  Emma. 

Meanwhile,  Nelson  had  sailed  to  Palermo,  taking  the 
fugitives  along.  There  he  made  his  home  with  the 
Hamiltons.  And  scandal  awoke,  even  in  that  easy- 
going crowd.  Nor  did  the  scandal  die  down  to  any 
appreciable  extent  on  the  birth  of  Lady  Hamilton's 
daughter,  Horatia,  a  year  or  so  later. 

Sir  William's  conduct  in  the  matter  is  still  a  puzzle. 
He  felt,  or  professed  to  feel,  that  there  was  no  occasion 
for  jealousy.  And  so  for  a  long  time  the  trio  shared 
the  same  house. 

One  of  the  courtiers  who  had  fled  with  the  king  and 
queen  to  Palermo  was  Prince  Caraccioli,  Nelson's  close 
friend  and  Lady  Hamilton's  bitter  enemy.  Caraccioli 
asked  leave  to  go  back  to  Naples  to  look  after  his  en- 
dangered property.  As  soon  as  he  reached  the  city, 
he  threw  in  his  lot  with  the  rebels  and  was  made  ad- 
miral of  their  navy. 

Presently,  by  the  aid  of  England's  fleet,  the  royal 
family  returned.  The  rebellion  was  put  down,  and  the 
king  and  queen  were  once  more  seated  firmly  on  their 
thrones.  The  rebel  leaders  were  seized  and  brought  to 
trial.  Nelson  is  said  to  have  promised  immunity  to 


• 


LADY      HAMILTON 


267 


Caraccioli  if  he  would  surrender.  Relying  on  his 
friend's  pledge,  Caraccioli  surrendered.  At  Emma's 
request  Nelson  had  the  overtrustful  man  hanged  from 
the  yardarm  of  his  own  flagship. 

This  is  the  darkest  smear  on  Nelson's  character,  a 
smear  that  even  his  most  blatant  admirers  have  never 
been  able  to  wipe  away.  It  is  not  in  keeping  with  any- 
thing else  in  his  life.  But  by  this  time  he  belonged  to 
Lady  Hamilton,  body  and  soul. 

She,  by  the  way,  had  managed  to  acquire  from  her 
friend,  the  Queen  of  Naples,  a  nice  tendency  toward 
blood-thirstiness;  as  witness  the  following  sweet  anec- 
dote by  Pryne  Lockhart  Gordon,  who  tells  of  dining 
•with  the  Hamiltons  at  Palermo,  in  company  with  a 
Turkish  officer: 

In  the  course  of  conversation,  the  officer  boasted  that 
with  the  sword  he  wore  he  had  put  to  death  a  number  of  French 
prisoners.  "Look,"  he  said,  "there  is  their  blood  remaining  on 
it."  When  the  speech  was  translated  to  her,  Lady  Hamilton's 
eyes  beamed  with  delight.  "Oh,  let  me  see  the  sword  that  did 
the  glorious  deed  I"  she  exclaimed.  Taking  the  sword  in  her 
hands,  which  were  covered  with  jewels,  she  looked  at  it,  then 
kissed  the  incrusted  blood  on  the  blade,  and  passed  it  on  to 
Nelson.  Only  one  who  was  a  witness  to  the  spectacle  can  im- 
agine how  disgusting  it  was. 

Enshrined  once  more  at  Naples,  hailed  as  savior  of 
the  realm,  acclaimed  for  her  share  in  the  Nile  victory, 
the  confidante  of  royalty — it  would  be  pleasant  to  say 
good-by  here  to  Emma  Lyon,  ex-nursemaid,  ex-bar- 


268  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

maid,  ex-lady's  maid,  nameless  offspring  of  a  Lan- 
cashire inn  slavey.  It  was  the  climax  of  a  wonderful 
life.  But  there  was  anti-climax  aplenty  to  follow. 

Nelson  went  home  to  England  to  receive  the  plaudits 
of  his  fellow  countrymen  and  to  settle  accounts  with 
his  wife.  Home,  too,  came  the  Hamiltons,  Sir  William 
having  been  recalled. 

Lady  Nelson  was  not  at  the  dock  to  meet  her  hero 
husband.  Bad  news  traveled  fast,  even  before  we 
boosted  it  along  by  wire  and  then  by  wireless.  Lady 
Nelson  had  heard.  And  Lady  Nelson  was  waiting  at 
home.  Thither,  blithely  enough,  fared  the  man  in 
whose  praise  a  million  Englishmen  were  cheering  them- 
selves hoarse — and  in  whose  silver-buckled  shoes  per- 
haps no  married  Englishman  would  just  then  have 
cared  or  dared  to  stand.  But  Nelson  was  a  hero.  He 
went  home. 

I  once  had  a  collie  puppy  that  had  never  chanced 
to  be  at  close  quarters  with  a  cat.  I  was  privileged  to 
see  him  when  he  made  his  first  gleefully  fearless  attack 
upon  one,  ignorant  of  the  potential  anguish  tucked 
away  Behind  a  feline's  velvety  paws.  Somehow — with 
no  disrespect  to  a  great  man — I  always  think  of  that 
poor,  about-to-be-disillusioned  puppy  when  I  try  to 
visualize  the  picture  of  Nelson's  home-coming. 

Just  what  happened  no  one  knows.  But  whatever 
it  was,  it  did  not  teach  Nelson  the  wisdom  of  husbandly 
reticence.  For,  a  few  weeks  later,  he  remarked  at 
breakfast: 


LADY     HAMILTON  269 

"I  have  just  received  another  letter  from  dear  Lady 
Hamilton." 

"I  am  sick  of  hearing  of  'dear'  Lady  Hamilton!" 
flared  the  long-suffering  wife.  "You  can  choose  be- 
tween us.  You  must  give  up  her  or  me." 

"Take  care,  Fanny!"  warned  Nelson.  "I  love  you 
dearly.  But  I  cannot  forget  all  I  owe  to  dear  Lady 
Hamilton." 

"This  is  the  end,  then,"  announced  Lady  Nelson, 
and  she  left  the  house. 

Only  once  again  did  she  and  her  husband  meet. 

Nelson  cast  off  all  pretense  at  concealment  after  his 
wife  left  him.  His  affair  with  Lady  Hamilton  became 
public  property.  Their  daughter,  Horatia,  was  openly 
acclaimed  by  him  as  his  heiress.  The  English  were  in 
a  quandary.  They  loved  Nelson;  they  hated  the 
woman  who  had  dragged  his  name  into  the  filth.  They 
could  not  snub  her  without  making  him  unhappy;  they 
could  not  honor  him  without  causing  her  to  shine  by 
reflected  glory.  It  was  unpleasant  all  around. 

In  1 805  the  deadlock  was  broken.  Nelson  was  again 
to  fight  the  French.  He  told  Lady  Hamilton  and  many 
others  that  this  campaign  was  to  end  in  his  death.  He 
ordered  his  coffin  made  ready  for  him.  Then  he  sailed 
against  the  French  fleet,  met  it  off  Cape  Trafalgar,  and 
annihilated  it.  In  the  thick  of  the  fight  a  musket  ball 
gave  him  his  death  wound.  He  was  carried  below,  and 
there,  the  battle  raging  around  him,  he  laboriously 
wrote  a  codicil  to  his  will,  entreating  his  king  and  coun- 


270  STORIES      OF      THE      SUPER-WOMEN 

try  to  repay  his  services  by  settling  a  pension  on  Lady 
Hamilton.  Then  to  his  next-in-command  he  panted: 

"I  am  going  fast.  Come  nearer.  Pray  let  my  dear 
Lady  Hamilton  have  my  hair  and  all  other  things  be- 
longing to  me.  Take  care  of  my  dear  Lady  Hamilton 
— poor  Lady  Hamilton!  Thank  God  I  have  done  my 
duty!" 

And  so  he  died,  this  knightly  little  demigod — true 
lover,  false  husband — who  had  fouled  his  snowy 
escutcheon  for  a  -worthless  woman. 

Now  comes  the  inevitable  anticlimax. 

All  England  turned  with  loathing  from  Lady  Hamil- 
ton. Her  husband  was  dead.  Lovers  stood  aloof.  Folk 
who  had  received  her  for  Nelson's  sake  barred  their 
doors  against  her.  She  had  followed  the  popular  cus- 
tom of  living  in  luxury  on  nothing  a  year.  Now  her 
creditors  swarmed  upon  her. 

Her  house  was  sold  for  debt.  Next  she  lived  in  Bond 
Street  lodgings,  growing  poorer  day  by  day  until  she 
was  condemned  to  the  debtor's  prison.  A  kind-hearted 
— or  hopeful — alderman  bought  her  out  of  jail.  A 
former  coachman  of  hers,  whose  wages  were  still  un- 
paid, threatened  her  with  arrest  for  debt.  She  fled  to 
Calais. 

There  she  lived  in  an  attic,  saved  from  absolute  star- 
vation by  a  fellow  Englishwoman,  a  Mrs.  Hunter.  Her 
youth  and  charm  had  fled.  The  power  that  had  lured 
Nelson  and  Greville  and  Hamilton  to  ruin  was  gone. 

In   1815  she  died.     Sh*?  -was  buried  in  a  pine  box, 


LADY     HAMILTON  271 

with  an  old  black  silk  petticoat  for  a  pall.  No  clergy- 
man could  be  found  to  take  charge  of  her  funeral.  So 
the  burial  service  was  read  by  a  fellow  debt  exile — a 
half-pay  Irish  army  captain. 

One  wonders — perhaps  morbidly — if  Nelson's  pos- 
sible punishment  in  another  world  might  not  have  been 
the  knowledge  of  what  befell  his  "dear"  Lady  Hamil- 
ton in  her  latter  days. 


THE  END. 


BUY  THESE  TITLES 

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MYSTERY 

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By  Elsie  N.   Wright 
Guilt 

By  Henry  James  Forman 
The  Stretelli  Case 

By  Edgar  Wallace 
Silinski,  Master   Criminal 

By  Edgar  Wallace 
The  Great  Hold-up  Mystery 

By  Wilfred  Usher 
The  Uncanny  House 

By  Mary  L.  Pendered 
The  Secret  of  Sheen 

By  John  Laurence 
Long  Shadows 

By  Camilla  Hope 
By  Foul  Means 

By  Patrick  Leytoa 
The   Phantom   Rickshaw 

By  Rudyard  Kipling 
Dreamy  Hollow 

By  Summer  C.  Britton 
The  Diamond  Cross  Mystery 

By   Chester  K.   Steele 
The  Mansion  of  Mystery 

By  Chester  K.  Steele 
The    Mosaic    Earring 

By  Nell  Martin 
The  Golf  Course  Mystery 

By  Chester  K.  Steele 
The  Million  Dollar  Suitcase 

By  MacGowan  and  Newbury 
City  of  the  Dreadful  Night 

By  Rudyard  Kipling 
The  Murders  in  the  Rue  Morgue 

By  Edgar  Allen  Poe 
The  Golden   Bowl 

By  Archie  Joscelyn 
The  Monk  of  Hambleton 

By  Armstrong  Livingston 

HISTORY 

In  the  Old  West 

By  Geo.  Fred  Ruxton 
The  Gold  Hunters 

By  J.  D.  Borthwrick 

WESTERN 

Don  Coyote 

By   Whitman   Chambers 

BIOGRAPHY 
Face  to  Face  with  Our  Presidents 

By  Joe  Mitchell  Chappie 

ROMANCE 
The  Girl  He  Left  Behind 

By  Helen  Beecher  Long 
Sins  of  the  Children 

By  Cosmo  Hamilton 


Bed  Rock 

By  Jack  Bethea 
Doubloons  and  The  Girl 

By  John  Maxwell  Forbes 
Quadrille  Court 

By  Cecil  Adair 
The  Lovely  Malincourt 

By  Helen  Mathers 
Sem's  Moroccan  Love 

By  Arthur  Kay 
The  Justice  of  the  King 

By  Hamilton  Drummond 
The  Star  of  Hollywood 

By   Edward   Stilgebauer 
Some  Honeymoon 

By  Charles  Everett  Hall 
Children   of   the   Whirlwind 

By  Leroy  Scott 
Who  Cares 

By  Cosmo  Hamilton 
The  Man  Who  Lived  in  a  Shoe 

By  Henry  James  Forman 
The   Enchanted   Garden 

By  Henry  James  Forman 
Cap'n  Abe  Storekeeper 

By  James  A.  Cooper 
Unforbidden  Fruit 

By  Warner  Fabian 
Mary  Regan 

By  Leroy  Scott 
The  Blindness  of  Virtue 

By  Cosmo  Hamilton 
Dancing  Desire 

By  Petronilla  Clayton 
Why  Marry 

By  Farguson  Johnson 

ADVENTURE 
Letters   of   Marque 

By   Rudyard  Kipling 
Under  the  Deodars 

By  Rudyard  Kipling 
On  Autumn  Trails 

By  Emma-Lindsay  Squier 
Soldiers  Three 

By  Rudyard  Kipling 
Tales  of  the  Fish  Patrol 

By  Jack  London 
When  God  Laughs 

By  Jack  London 
On  the  Highest  Hill 

By  H.  M.  Stephenson 
South  Sea  Tales 

By  Jack  London 
Wilbur  Crane's  Handicap 

By  John  Maxwell  Forbes 
The  Light  That  Failed 

By  Rudyard  Kipling 
Rainbow  Island 


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